Grip Security vs. Obsidian Security

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.

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Overview of Grip Security

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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. The platform was originally focused on shadow IT and DLP, but it recently announced posture management functionality.

Overview of Obsidian Security

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Obsidian Security is a comprehensive SaaS security platform built to enhance threat detection, maintain compliance, and minimize the overall attack surface. It offers advanced posture hardening, integration management, and automated threat remediation across diverse SaaS ecosystems. By combining powerful integration and compliance capabilities, Obsidian streamlines security operations, enabling organizations to efficiently meet regulatory standards and protect critical data. Key advantages include smooth integration with identity providers, AI-powered threat analytics, and detailed compliance reporting. Its pricing model is competitive, offering a strong balance between functionality and cost-effectiveness.

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Grip Security and Obsidian Security Feature Comparison

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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.

Obsidian Security Key Features

• User Event Behavior Analytics (UEBA): Utilizes machine learning to monitor user activity and detect anomalous behavior that could indicate a security threat.
• Insider Threat Detection: Focuses on identifying and mitigating risks associated with insider threats.
• Advanced Threat Detection: Uses behavior-based detection to identify and respond to potential security incidents.
• User-Centric Governance: Protects critical SaaS applications by monitoring user interactions and access patterns.
• Incident Response: Provides tools to investigate and respond to security incidents within SaaS environments.

Implementation and User Experience of Grip Security and Obsidian Security

• 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.
• Obsidian Security: The platform is also API-based, and agentless, except for an agent-based browser extension used for SaaS discovery. Ingesting data from SaaS applications, normalizing and deduplicating can take several business days. The platform's interface is geared toward monitoring and responding to user-centric threats, offering a streamlined experience for security teams focused on insider risk management.

Number of Integrations of Grip Security and Obsidian Security

• Grip Security: Supports around 30 SaaS applications, and integrates with CASBs, SIEMs, and identity providers, allowing for streamlined incident response and data aggregation. 
• Obsidian Security: Integration options are limited, with a focus on key SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Microsoft, Workday, ServiceNow, Google, Okta, and Slack. Niche or industry-specific SaaS applications are not supported.

Speed to Integration for Grip Security and Obsidian Security

• Grip Security: Grip does not promise any timeline for adding integrations.
• Obsidian Security: Extremely slow to add integrations. They put customer requests “on the roadmap” with no guarantees.‍

SaaS to SaaS Discovery Capabilities of Grip Security and Obsidian Security

• 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. Grip also discovers risky OAuth scopes. 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.
• Obsidian Security: App discovery is more limited, with a focus on key applications that are monitored for user behavior. It provides less comprehensive coverage compared to AppOmni and cannot discover shadow IT.

Shadow IT Capabilities of Grip Security and Obsidian Security

• 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.
• Obsidian Security: Obsidian has invested heavily into new browser-based technology to discover shadow apps. This discovers connected shadow apps, but is limited to Chrome browser only. Additionally, this agent-based browser extension can introduce supply chain risks, create new attack vectors, and create performance issues.

→ Read Next: The Hidden Risks of Browser Extensions in SaaS Security (Blog)

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Grip Security & Obsidian Security AI Governance Features

• Grip Security: offers limited AI governance capabilities as it discovers managed and unmanaged AI instances and provides insight into risky OAuth scopes.
• Obsidian Security: Obsidian's offering centers on shadow AI management through browser extension technology, enabling organizations to identify, catalog, and regulate employee GenAI usage. Their solution monitors GenAI interactions, analyzes document uploads, and provides governance controls to manage access across the organization's AI ecosystem.

Agentic AI Support Offered by Grip Security & Obsidian Security 

• Grip Security: Does not offer an AI Agent or Assistant for efficiency gains.
• Obsidian Security: Does not offer an AI Agent or Assistant, but touts having made new investments in AI security.

Overview of Compliance Features of Grip Security

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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.

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Overview of Compliance Features of Obsidian Security

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Obsidian Security offers compliance features focused on monitoring user behavior and access patterns to ensure that SaaS environments adhere to internal policies and external regulations. While not as comprehensive as AppOmni's compliance capabilities, Obsidian's tools provide valuable insights into potential compliance risks associated with user actions.

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Compliance Comparison of Grip Security and Obsidian Security

• 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.
• Obsidian Security: Provides basic compliance features centered around user behavior and access monitoring. It is more focused on internal policy enforcement and insider risk management than on comprehensive regulatory compliance.

‍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 Obsidian Security Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Excels at AI-based threat detection, insider threat management, and is an excellent SOC tool.
• Excels at governing app-to-app data movement
• Strong integration with identity providers (IdP)
• Mature compliance automation capabilities

Cons:

• Can’t distinguish when a connected app is federated, which can lead to false positives. 
• Agent-based, browser technology can introduce privacy, security, and performance issues
• Can discover shadow apps but may be limited to Chrome browser
• Limited integration support: supports 50 apps

Overview of Reco

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Reco is a comprehensive alternative to Grip Security and Obsidian Security. While Grip Security focuses on shadow SaaS detection and DLP and Obsidian focuses primarily on identity threat detection, Reco focuses on securing the entire SaaS lifecycle. Reco offers broader SaaS coverage, with a four-pronged solution that includes: Shadow SaaS and AI Discovery, SSPM, Identity and Access Governance, and Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR). Additionally, Reco offers support for over 175 SaaS applications and can roll out integrations per customer request in a matter of days – faster than any provider on the market.

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Reco’s Integration Capabilities

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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.

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Reco’s Comprehensive App Discovery and Shadow IT Features

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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. 

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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. 

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App Discovery

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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.

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Shadow IT

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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.

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Reco’s Key Features and Benefits

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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.

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Identity Management

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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.

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Advanced Analytics & ITDR

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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.

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Multi-Tenant Management

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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. 

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Permissions and Access

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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. 

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‍Compliance and Configurations

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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. 

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‍‍GenAI and Agentic AI Governance

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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.

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Reco AI Agents

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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.

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How Reco Enhances Efficiency and Compliance

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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. 

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Conclusion

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For CISOs evaluating SaaS security solutions, Grip Security and Obsidian Security 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.

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Obsidian Security, on the other hand, is better suited for organizations prioritizing user behavior monitoring and insider threat protection. Reco is the most comprehensive SaaS security solution, and the only option offering posture management, shadow app discovery, and threat detection.

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The choice will depend on whether your focus is on if the solution offers a simplified approach to securing your SaaS ecosystem that’s focused on app discovery, or on proactively preventing data exposure by maintaining security posture of your SaaS applications, with a focus on core applications like Salesforce.

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Want to compare more top SaaS security vendors? Download the FREE Guide to compare Obsidian Security, Grip Security, CrowdStrike Shield, Legacy SSPM, and Reco side by side.

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Or schedule a demo of Reco to get started with SaaS security today!

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If you notice any discrepancies or updates, please contact us at info@reco.ai.