CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Bitsight vs Censys

Bitsight delivers a map of assets and vulnerabilities across an enterprise and its supply chain, prioritized by real-time threat intelligence. Censys supports investigations with real-time Internet infrastructure visibility and historical context. CISO Tribune files both under External attack surface management and Threat intelligence. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

Change the companies

Up to four companies side by side.

  • Bitsight
  • Censys
Bitsight vs Censys: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
BitsightBitsight delivers a map of assets and vulnerabilities across an enterprise and its supply chain, prioritized by real-time threat intelligence.bitsight.comCensysCensys supports investigations with real-time Internet infrastructure visibility and historical context.censys.com
What it sells
  • Vendor Risk Management[5]Helps risk and security teams manage a growing vendor portfolio.
  • Continuous Monitoring[6][11]Delivers daily insight into vendors and their vendors.
  • Security Ratings[2][7]Gives an objective, outside-in measure of supplier cybersecurity performance.
  • Attack Surface Intelligence[2][8]Combines external attack surface intelligence and AI-driven threat intelligence.
  • Cyber Threat Intelligence[2][9]Delivers threat intelligence through the platform and APIs.
  • Supply Chain Exposure Management[2][11]Monitors third-party vendors and sends evidence-backed threat alerts.
  • Third-Party Intelligence[7]Brings supplier security posture and live threat intelligence together.
  • Censys Platform[3][8][17][18][19][20][21]Delivers visibility and intelligence for triage, threat investigation, adversary hunting and Internet exposure management.
  • Censys ASM[8]Reveals Internet-facing assets, services and exposures across all 65,535 ports.
  • Adversary Investigation[3][4][5][9][17][19]An add-on module to the Censys Platform to detect, analyze and track threat infrastructure.
  • cencli[20]A command line tool for running search queries, looking up assets and performing aggregations.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesAnn Arbor, United States[2][21]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2017[1]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • March 19, 2026Bitsight introduced Bitsight Security Posture Management, designed to help organizations measure, improve and demonstrate cyber resilience.[15]
  • February 10, 2026Bitsight announced Dark Web Intelligence for Supply Chains, a capability for detecting and responding to threats across vendor ecosystems.[14]
  • September 22, 2026Censys announced an expanded global Channel Partner Program and investments to accelerate its channel-first growth strategy.[14]
  • July 22, 2026Censys announced record first half 2026 growth, reflecting growing enterprise adoption of Internet intelligence.[13]
  • July 8, 2026Censys expanded its Internet Map to include real-time DNS visibility.[25]
  • June 18, 2026Censys announced its expansion into security operations, enabling organizations to use its internet intelligence across security workflows.[26]
  • June 18, 2026Censys announced its expansion into security operations, enabling organizations to use its Internet intelligence across security workflows.[12]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[16]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[6]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
Not written yetFrom its own pages, Censys sells to private and public sector security teams. Censys describes a plan for threat hunting and CTI teams looking to hunt, track and engineer detections for adversary campaigns and infrastructure. Censys describes a plan for enterprises that want to use Censys data across alert triage, IR, threat intel and detection engineering. Censys offers purpose-built internet intelligence with specialized datasets for government specific investigations and exposure management requirements. Censys offers Single Sign-On through a SAML-based integration to Enterprise and Government users.
Last verified
November 2, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Bitsight and Censys are both filed under External attack surface management and Threat intelligence.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Bitsight's primary category is Third-party risk and security ratings; Censys's is External attack surface management.
  • Bitsight is also filed under Vulnerability management.
  • Bitsight lists Vendor Risk Management, Continuous Monitoring, Security Ratings, Attack Surface Intelligence, Cyber Threat Intelligence and 2 more. Censys lists Censys Platform, Censys ASM, Adversary Investigation and cencli.
  • Censys is headquartered in Ann Arbor, United States.
  • Censys was founded in 2017.

What it sells: Bitsight

What Vendor Risk Management does[5]
Teams build a third-party inventory by inviting vendors to the platform and connecting with them. Teams review uploaded documents in one place, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, SIG questionnaires, insurance, and external audits. Bitsight Vendor Risk Management syncs data with GRC and reporting tools, including RSA Archer, ServiceNow, and LogicManager, through an open API.
What Continuous Monitoring does[6][11]
Bitsight Continuous Monitoring delivers daily, objective insight into vendors and their vendors. It includes automatic fourth-party discovery that maps the technology stacks of vendors. It provides 12+ months of risk analytics for every vendor in a portfolio.
What Security Ratings does[2][7]
Bitsight Security Ratings provide an objective, continuously updated view of each supplier's cybersecurity posture. Teams can track whether supplier posture is improving or deteriorating over time. Teams can combine posture with live threat activity to distinguish isolated events from broader weaknesses.
What Attack Surface Intelligence does[2][8]
It inventories internet-facing systems including domains, subdomains, IPs, hosts, software, CVEs, certificates, cloud storage, and exposed services. It detects shadow IT and unsanctioned assets across AWS, Azure, GCP, and SaaS environments.
What Cyber Threat Intelligence does[2][9]
Bitsight delivers cyber threat intelligence in structured, actionable formats through the platform and APIs. Bitsight tracks 700+ ATP groups, 4,000+ malware types, 95M threat actors, 6M unique IOCs, and 1B compromised credentials weekly. Bitsight supports STIX/TAXII and offers simplified, integration-ready data structures.
What Supply Chain Exposure Management does[2][11]
Bitsight Beacon is Bitsight's Supply Chain Exposure Management data solution that continuously monitors third-party vendors and provides triaged, evidence-backed threat alerts for supply chain exposures. Bitsight Beacon alerts are delivered directly into SIEM and SOAR. Bitsight Beacon covers more than 30 threat scenarios.
What Third-Party Intelligence does[7]
Bitsight Third-Party Intelligence brings supplier security posture and live threat intelligence together in one place. It monitors ransomware, data breaches, hacktivism, and cyber news affecting suppliers. Its dashboard gives a centralized view of supplier ratings, threat activity, trends, and adverse events.

What it sells: Censys

What Censys Platform does[3][8][17][18][19][20][21]
Censys Platform has API endpoints for integrating Platform functionality with a customer tech stack. Censys Platform uses a language called Censys Query Language. Censys Platform includes a web property dataset covering name-based assets on the internet, including websites, APIs and web-based applications.
What Censys ASM does[8]
Censys ASM uses first-party scanning to find Internet-exposed assets, including services on nonstandard ports, self-signed certificates, hosts in residential networks and dangling DNS records. Censys ASM sends alerts on changes such as new hosts and services, open ports and reissued certificates. Censys ranks risks by severity, category and affected asset.
What Adversary Investigation does[3][4][5][9][17][19]
The Adversary Investigation module is an add-on to the Censys Platform for organizations to detect, analyze and track threat infrastructure. Actions that use CensEye to discover related infrastructure for a host, web property or certificate are only available to users with access to the Adversary Investigation module.

Questions about Bitsight and Censys

What do Bitsight and Censys sell?
Bitsight sells Vendor Risk Management, Continuous Monitoring, Security Ratings, Attack Surface Intelligence, Cyber Threat Intelligence and 2 more. Censys sells Censys Platform, Censys ASM, Adversary Investigation and cencli.
Are Bitsight and Censys in the same category?
They share External attack surface management and Threat intelligence. Bitsight's primary category is Third-party risk and security ratings and Censys's is External attack surface management.
Where are Bitsight and Censys headquartered?
Censys is headquartered in Ann Arbor, United States.
When were Bitsight and Censys founded?
Censys was founded in 2017.
Who are Bitsight and Censys sold to?
From its own pages, Censys sells to private and public sector security teams.
What have Bitsight and Censys announced recently?
March 19, 2026: Bitsight introduced Bitsight Security Posture Management, designed to help organizations measure, improve and demonstrate cyber resilience. September 22, 2026: Censys announced an expanded global Channel Partner Program and investments to accelerate its channel-first growth strategy.

About Bitsight

Bitsight delivers a map of assets and vulnerabilities across an enterprise and its supply chain, prioritized by real-time threat intelligence. Bitsight serves both security operations and risk teams across the enterprise. Bitsight scans over 4B+ IPs to discover assets, subsidiaries, cloud environments, and supply chain exposure across connected digital infrastructure. Bitsight predicts the likelihood that a CVE will be exploited using real-time threat intelligence from 7M+ daily items across 1,000+ underground sources. Bitsight identifies compromised credentials, discovers ransomware and active exploits, and prioritizes remediation based on attacker activity from 1,000+ underground sources.[2][3]

Bitsight monitors third-, fourth-, and nth-party exposure across a network of 68K+ vendors. Bitsight Vendor Risk Management lets teams review uploaded documents in one place, including SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, SIG questionnaires, insurance, and external audits. Bitsight Vendor Risk Management syncs data with GRC and reporting tools, including RSA Archer, ServiceNow, and LogicManager, through an open API.[2][3][5][11]

Bitsight Continuous Monitoring delivers daily, objective insight into vendors and their vendors. Bitsight Vulnerability Detection & Response surfaces exposed vendors within hours and helps coordinate cross-vendor response at scale. Bitsight gives vendors free access to Trust Management Hub so that vendors can reach their profiles. Bitsight professional services range from program design aligned to NIST CSF, ISO 27001, DORA, and NIS2 to managed vendor assessments and board-ready reporting.[4][6]

Bitsight AI maps vendor SOC 2 reports, audit reports, and questionnaires to the frameworks teams already use, tracking vendor exposure across the supply chain. SOC2 Instant Insights, powered by Bitsight AI, summarizes SOC 2 reports in seconds. Bitsight Third-Party Intelligence brings supplier security posture and live threat intelligence together in one place. Bitsight Third-Party Intelligence monitors ransomware, data breaches, hacktivism, and cyber news affecting suppliers.[5][7]

Bitsight describes Attack Surface Intelligence (ASI) as an evolution of External Attack Surface Management (EASM) that combines continuous asset discovery with real-time threat intelligence from the clear, deep, and dark web.[2]

Bitsight tracks 700+ ATP groups, 4,000+ malware types, 95M threat actors, 6M unique IOCs, and 1B compromised credentials weekly. Bitsight delivers cyber threat intelligence in structured formats through the platform and APIs. Bitsight supports STIX/TAXII and offers simplified, integration-ready data structures designed to fit into operational workflows and dashboards. The Identity Intelligence Module lets teams automatically reset or disable exposed accounts through native identity provider integrations (Active Directory, Okta, Entra ID). Bitsight threat intelligence services include purchases of compromised credentials listed for sale on the deep and dark web.[2][9]

Bitsight Beacon is Bitsight's Supply Chain Exposure Management data solution that continuously monitors third-party vendors and provides triaged, evidence-backed threat alerts for supply chain exposures. Bitsight Beacon alerts are delivered directly into SIEM and SOAR. Bitsight Beacon covers more than 30 threat scenarios. Optional managed services for Bitsight Beacon handle triage and vendor remediation. Bitsight Continuous Monitoring tracks vendor risk posture over time, and Bitsight Beacon detects active threats in near real-time.[2][6][11]

Bitsight SPM integrates with tools like ServiceNow, Palo Alto Cortex, Splunk, PowerBI, and Microsoft Sentinel. Bitsight is a SaaS platform that is 100% cloud-based in Amazon Web Services. Bitsight is headquartered in the U.S., and all personal data is hosted in the United States. Bitsight complies with the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the UK Extension, and the Swiss-U.S. Data Privacy Framework. Bitsight has a report on Controls at a Service Organization Relevant to Security available for review.[1][4][5][6][7][12]

Bitsight on the record

Sources

Bitsight full record

  1. [1]Bitsight insurance business grows 30 h1 extending market leadershipBitsight · bitsight.com · published October 9, 2025 · Tier A
  2. [2]bitsight.comBitsight · bitsight.com · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Bitsight | The Cyber Risk Platform Trusted by the Fortune 500Bitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Bitsight Vendor Network | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Vendor Risk Management (VRM) Platform | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Third Party Risk Management Solutions | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Bitsight Third-Party Intelligence SolutionBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Attack Surface Intelligence Solutions | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Cyber Threat Intelligence Data | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Identity Intelligence Solutions | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Supply Chain Exposure Management | Bitsight BeaconBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]SPM Integrations | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]About Bitsight Security | BitsightBitsight · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Bitsight Launches Industry’s First Dark Web Intelligence for Supply Chains, Empowering Organizations to Predict and Prevent Third-Party Exploits | BitsightBitsight · published February 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Bitsight Introduces Security Posture Management to Operationalize Enterprise Cyber Resilience | BitsightBitsight · published March 19, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Bitsight Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier C

Censys full record

  1. [1]Censys introduces the ground truth for internet intelligence the censys internet map 301938734Censys via PR Newswire · prnewswire.com · published September 26, 2023 · Tier A
  2. [2]CareersCensys · censys.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Censys | The Authority for Internet Intelligence and InsightsCensys · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Platform API Transition GuideCensys · published October 5, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]SAML AuthenticationCensys · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Censys Attack Surface Management Reviews & Product Details - G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier C
  7. [7]Censys Search - CensysCensys · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Censys | Attack Surface Management | Internet VisibilityCensys · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Adversary Investigation - CensysCensys · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Critical Infrastructure Monitoring - CensysCensys · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Trusted by Global Leaders for VisibilityCensys · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Censys Expands Into Security Operations with Internet Intelligence-Powered WorkflowsCensys · published June 18, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Censys Delivers Record First Half 2026 Growth as AI Driven Demand for Internet Intelligence AcceleratesCensys · published July 22, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Censys Transforms Global Channel Program to Accelerate Partner-Led GrowthCensys · published September 22, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Censys Reviews, Ratings & Features 2026 | Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed November 3, 2026 · Tier C
  16. [16]Censys | External Exposure Management & Attack Surface MappingCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Platform API Transition GuideCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]Platform FAQsCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  19. [19]Google SecOps SOAR IntegrationCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  20. [20]Platform CLI ToolCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  21. [21]Pricing | CensysCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  22. [22]Censys Built by Cybersecurity Experts for Real-Time Threat IntelligenceCensys · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  23. [23]Censys Unveils Censys ARC, Formalizing Its Global Internet Threat Research TeamCensys · published March 10, 2026 · Tier A
  24. [24]Censys Powers SOC Modernization with Real-Time Internet Context and Risk ScoringCensys · published April 9, 2026 · Tier A
  25. [25]Censys Expands Its Internet Map to Include DNS IntelligenceCensys · published July 8, 2026 · Tier A
  26. [26]Censys Expands Into Security Operations with Internet Intelligence-Powered WorkflowsCensys · published June 18, 2026 · Tier A

Spot a factual error? Request a correction.