This intelligence in this comparison is based on feedback from multiple meetings conducted by Reco experts with industry experts, customers and prospects. Feature classifications such as "Basic" or "Advanced," are influenced by the number of integrations and the depth of feature coverage. As vendor offerings evolve, these classifications may change. This table reflects the most recent data available as of May 26, 2025. Vendor offerings may change over time, and we cannot guarantee the ongoing accuracy of this information.
Overview of Grip Security
Grip Security is focused on securing access to SaaS applications across an organization. Its capabilities include automated app discovery, shadow IT monitoring, data loss prevention, and governance. Grip aims to provide complete visibility into SaaS usage, allowing CISOs to mitigate risks associated with SaaS application sprawl and unauthorized app usage. The platform is designed for quick deployment and offers integrations with existing security tools, facilitating a unified approach to SaaS security.
Overview of CrowdStrike Shield
CrowdStrike Shield is focused on helping enterprises secure their entire SaaS stack through posture management, and threat detection and response. It provides in-depth configuration checks across various SaaS applications, aligning them with industry best practices to avoid malware attacks that happen on using outdated agent versions. Users can see a full list of device vulnerabilities and understand the scope of each issue. CrowdStrike Shield follows a holistic Zero Trust Approach, aiming to detect and mitigate threats in SaaS environments continuously. CrowdStrike Shield also provides a step-by-step remediation approach for these issues. As part of the CrowdStrike suite, CrowdStrike Shield typically caters to large enterprises and is especially suitable for organizations that desire integration with existing Crowdstrike tools and vendor consolidation.
Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield Feature Comparison
Grip Security Key Features
- Automated App Discovery: Provides real-time visibility into all SaaS applications used across the organization, including unauthorized or unapproved apps.
- Shadow IT Monitoring: Identifies risky or unauthorized SaaS usage and helps implement controls to mitigate exposure.
- Data Loss Prevention: Protects sensitive data by enforcing DLP policies across various SaaS applications.
- Governance and Compliance: Enables continuous monitoring and compliance reporting for key regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA).
- Automated Remediation: Offers automated workflows to address security incidents, such as disabling risky SaaS apps or alerting relevant teams.
CrowdStrike Shield Key Features
- Comprehensive Risk Assessment: Continuous risk evaluation across SaaS platforms, focusing on configuration issues and vulnerabilities.
- Security Posture Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of misconfigurations.
- Compliance Checks: Out-of-the-box compliance frameworks that simplify adherence to regulations.
- User Access Management: Enforce the principle of least privilege across SaaS applications by determining permission level.
- Remediation Guidance: Actionable remediation suggestions provided to fix security gaps.
Implementation and User Experience of Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield
- Grip Security is known for its fast deployment and user-friendly interface. Its automated discovery tools provide immediate insights into SaaS usage, making it suitable for organizations with limited SaaS management resources. The platform offers customizable dashboards and reports, allowing CISOs to quickly understand security gaps and compliance risks.
- CrowdStrike Shield provides a deeper focus on SSPM, with detailed configuration checks that require initial setup and tuning. Its user experience is geared toward security teams that have familiarity with managing complex SaaS environments. The platform offers a more structured approach to remediation, with comprehensive guidance on fixing configuration issues.
Number of Integrations of Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield
- Grip Security: Supports around 30 SaaS applications, and integrates with CASBs, SIEMs, and identity providers, allowing for streamlined incident response and data aggregation.
- CrowdStrike Shield: Has extensive integrations with 180 SaaS applications, focusing on leading business productivity and collaboration tools, such as Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and ServiceNow.
Speed to Integration for CrowdStrike Shield and Obsidian Security
- Grip Security: Grip does not promise any timeline for adding integrations.
- CrowdStrike Shield: CrowdStrike Shield touts 180+ out-of-the-box integrations and a custom Integration Builder, with no guarantee on delivery time of new integrations. Currently, its development focus is on integration with the CrowdStrike suite and not necessarily adding support for new SaaS Apps.
SaaS-to-SaaS Discovery Capabilities of Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield
- Grip Security offers automated discovery of all SaaS applications, including unsanctioned apps, with minimal setup. Its approach covers both network and endpoint data sources, enabling complete visibility into SaaS usage. This feature helps organizations manage shadow IT and identify new app adoption trends.
- CrowdStrike Shield focuses on discovering apps that have been formally integrated and configured within the organization. While it provides valuable insights into managed SaaS applications, it may not cover unapproved or rogue apps as comprehensively as Grip.
Shadow IT Capabilities of Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield
- Grip Security excels in identifying and controlling shadow IT, offering tools to detect unapproved SaaS applications and enforce usage policies. It provides insights into app usage trends and enables security teams to block or restrict access to risky apps. Grip uses email scanning technology to detect rogue apps. However, there are privacy concerns with Grip’s ability to read the entirety of an organization’s emails.
- CrowdStrike Shield, while more focused on SSPM, does provide visibility into user access patterns and configurations, which can help in understanding the use of managed applications. However, it is not as comprehensive in tracking rogue or unmanaged SaaS apps as Grip Security.
Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield AI Governance Features
- Grip Security: Can support AI governance in limited capacity by discovering shadow AI usage and identifying risky OAuth scopes.
- CrowdStrike Shield: CrowdStrike Shield implements GenAI security policies to detect configuration changes, prevent data leakage from misconfigured AI settings and uncover unauthorized AI applications.
Agentic AI Support Offered by Legacy SSPM & Obsidian Security
- Grip Security: Does not offer AI assistant or Agent for streamlining SaaS security tasks.
- CrowdStrike Shield: CrowdStrike Shield does not currently offer an AI Agent or AI Assistant to augment security workflows
Overview of Compliance Features of Grip Security
Grip Security offers compliance monitoring and reporting for major regulatory frameworks such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA. Its compliance features include automated risk assessments, data protection policies, and audit trails to track data access across SaaS applications. Grip also supports continuous compliance monitoring, with alerts for policy violations and automated remediation capabilities.
Overview of Compliance Features of CrowdStrike Shield
CrowdStrike Shield emphasizes compliance with a broad set of standards, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and others. The platform continuously monitors SaaS application configurations for compliance and provides comprehensive reporting capabilities. It also offers customizable compliance assessments that allow organizations to align security policies with specific regulatory requirements.
Compliance Comparison of Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield
- Grip Security: provides robust compliance features designed to help organizations meet various regulatory and industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, and others. The platform focuses on ensuring that SaaS applications are used in a compliant manner, addressing data security and privacy requirements.
- CrowdStrike Shield: Simplifies compliance with pre-configured templates and continuous monitoring. It emphasizes ease of use, making it easier for organizations to maintain compliance without extensive manual effort. CrowdStrike Shield’s real-time alerts and detailed reporting also ensure that any compliance issues are promptly addressed.
Overview of Grip Security Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Excels at shadow SaaS and AI discovery
- Fast deployment and user-friendly, customizable interface
- Adept at enforcing DLP policies across various SaaS applications.
- Proficient at SaaS-to-SaaS mapping and identifying OAuth risks
Cons:
- Scans an organization's emails, both header and body, to uncover shadow apps. This introduces privacy concerns. Solutions that only scan the header may be more suitable for privacy-conscious organizations.
- Recently introduced SSPM, but as a newer offering it is not as mature as other SSPM providers.
- Does not offer threat detection capabilities.
- Only supports 30 SaaS applications and is slow to integrate new apps
Overview of CrowdStrike Shield Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Supports 180 SaaS apps and an Integration Builder
- Good choice for organizations that use CrowdStrike and want to consolidate vendors or get more out of existing tools
- Strong focus on posture management offering 5000+ security policies for hardening configurations
Cons:
- Can discover misconfigured third-party apps, but has limited visibility into OAuth scopes
- Alerts based on static rules and thresholds as opposed to business context, which can produce false positives
- Focus on SSPM, while app discovery, shadow app discovery, SaaS-to-SaaS detection and threat detection is more limited
Overview of Reco
Reco is a comprehensive alternative to Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield. While Grip Security focuses on shadow SaaS detection and DLP and CrowdStrike Shield focuses on SSPM and integration volume, Reco focuses on securing the entire SaaS lifecycle. While Reco and CrowdStrike’s integration coverage is comparable, Reco’s Dynamic SaaS Security Platform goes beyond static configuration checks delivering depth of visibility, breadth of SaaS-to-SaaS governance, and the ability to proactively detect and mitigate risks in real-time. Similarly, Reco’s shadow app discovery capabilities are similar to Grip, but offer broader SaaS coverage and more focus on SSPM and threat detection.
Reco’s Integration Capabilities
Reco can discover and secure over 50,000 SaaS applications. It integrates with 100+ SaaS applications. Reco develops new application integrations using a low-code, no-code development and can add a new full-featured integration in 3-5 days.
Reco’s Comprehensive App Discovery and Shadow IT Features
Reco is a comprehensive SaaS security solution that supports the entire lifecycle of SaaS, from posture management to shadow IT and threat detection and response. It gives organizations full visibility into their SaaS ecosystem, monitors permissions and access across identities, and tracks misconfigurations and configuration drifts.
Reco uses advanced analytics around persona, actions, interactions and relationships to other users, and then uses this context to send prioritized alerts on potential exposure. This comprehensive picture is generated continuously using the Reco Identities Interaction Graph and empowers security teams to take swift action to effectively prioritize their most critical points of risk. Reco uses a low-code/no-code approach to add a new SaaS integration in 3-5 days.
App Discovery
Until now, even answering how many SaaS applications were connected to an organization’s environment was almost impossible, let alone what they are. Reco’s AI-based graph technology connects in minutes and provides immediate visibility to security teams to continuously discover all SaaS applications, Shadow IT, GenAI tool usage, and data exposure risks. Reco is then able to identify, contextualize, prioritize and – most importantly – address potential risks.
Shadow IT
Reco monitors email headers and uses this data to discover apps installed without IT approval/authorization. Reco is the only solution that combines this technology with posture management and threat detection within the SaaS ecosystem. In comparison to Grip Security which scans the whole email, Reco’s email header scanning technology is less invasive and better suited for privacy-conscious organizations.
Reco’s Key Features and Benefits
Reco is a full lifecycle SaaS security solution that brings a suite of innovative features that are redefining standards in the SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) category.
Identity Management
Reco introduces a contextual, graph-based approach to identity management. Unlike traditional SSPM solutions that treat identity in isolation, Reco's system integrates identities across all SaaS platforms, providing a unified view that provides context, enhances security oversight, and bolsters incident response. This graph-based approach offers deep insight into potential security risks associated with interconnected identities and permissions and fewer false positives thanks to this crucial context absent from other SSPM solutions.
Advanced Analytics & ITDR
Reco’s contextual graph is the baseline for the real-time adaptive policy engine that allows end users to create and modify security policies that respond dynamically in real time to emerging threats. Reco integrates with existing security tools such as SOAR platforms and SIEMs, automating remediation processes. This reduces both the window of opportunity for attackers and configuration drifts as they happen. This continuous compliance helps organizations identify and remediate potential threats that might otherwise go unnoticed for months until performing official compliance audits.
Read Next → How Reco Uses ITDR to Detect Sophisticated Threats
Multi-Tenant Management
Reco is designed for both service providers and large enterprises. Reco supports complex multi-tenant environments, allowing organizations to manage multiple clients or business units from a single, centralized platform. Each tenant's data is isolated and secure.
Permissions and Access
Over-permissioned access, stale accounts, and external accounts pose immense risks to organizations’ data security. Reco continuously assesses users’ permission level using the principle of least privilege access, ensuring users and service accounts have no more access than necessary. In addition, Reco helps identify and revoke permissions that are unused or dormant, stale accounts, and risky user behavior that could lead to a breach. This constant monitoring across identities helps organizations ensure over-privileged users don’t become a liability.
Compliance and Configurations
As misconfigurations are one of the highest risks organizations face, Reco can help teams stay in continuous compliance by monitoring for configuration changes or drifts. These metrics are fully customizable to help organizations recognize and resolve compliance issues before an audit. By tracking and gaining visibility into these potential risks, organizations are able to ensure they are following the correct industry best practices and frameworks.
GenAI and Agentic AI Governance
Reco's Dynamic SaaS Security Platform governs AI systems across your SaaS ecosystem by automatically discovering all connected AI tools—from enterprise solutions to shadow applications—and monitoring their data access. It establishes behavioral baselines for AI agents to detect anomalies indicating compromise, maps connections between SaaS applications and AI systems to identify excessive permissions, and verifies appropriate authentication controls and access limitations. This comprehensive approach addresses the unique security challenges of both generative AI and autonomous agents.
Reco AI Agents
Reco AI Agents streamline SaaS security through intelligent automation, reducing analyst workload while enhancing protection. These agents perform smart alert triage, saving teams an average of 7 minutes per alert by evaluating threats in context and filtering out noise. They automate contextual investigation by gathering and correlating information across the SaaS ecosystem, continuously analyze identity risks (reducing manual audit work by 40%), and provide dynamic, situation-specific remediation recommendations that replace static playbooks with adaptive guidance for more efficient threat response.
How Reco Enhances Efficiency and Compliance
Reco has saved costs, time and lowered risk for organizations. Users saved 500+ hours/year when automating the user access review process, and 350+ hours/year no longer handling manual data aggregation and correlation for investigation. They saved $70,000/year on average when automating posture checks and mapping to compliance frameworks, and $50,000/year when removing stale accounts identified using Reco. Users lower risk by 90% from the visibility gained across core SaaS applications, third-party apps, and shadow IT, and lower risk by 70% when automating event monitoring in Salesforce and Microsoft 365.
Conclusion
For CISOs evaluating SaaS security solutions, Grip Security and CrowdStrike Shield offer distinct advantages depending on the organization's specific needs. Grip Security is better suited for organizations seeking SaaS app discovery and shadow IT management, providing unmatched visibility into all SaaS usage across an organization. It includes robust data protection features like data loss prevention and automated compliance monitoring to ensure regulatory adherence. The platform’s automated remediation capabilities enable quick response to security incidents, reducing overall risk and streamlining SaaS governance.
CrowdStrike Shield, on the other hand, is a good fit for organizations looking for a simplified approach to SaaS security with an emphasis on risk assessment and compliance. Reco is the most comprehensive SaaS security solution, and the only option offering posture management, shadow app discovery, and threat detection.
The choice will depend on whether your focus is on gaining complete visibility into what's connected and has access to your environment in order to secure your SaaS ecosystem, or on a broad and simplified approach to posture management and prevention.
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