Nightfall vs. BetterCloud: Looking for a BetterCloud alternative?

SaaS security posture management or cloud Data Loss Prevention: which is right for you?

By one estimate, the average company has a whopping 254 SaaS apps (with enterprises averaging 364 apps). Employees may not be using all 250+ SaaS platforms regularly; this leaves dozens of apps with unchecked access to the business’ IT environment — a big security risk. 

Tools like Nightfall and BetterCloud aim to reduce this potential risk in different ways. BetterCloud, a SaaS management app, offers increased visibility into the use of SaaS apps, mainly around who has access to these tools and what permissions they might have. Nightfall uses machine learning and AI to regularly scan cloud environments for instances where valuable data may be at risk of being exposed. 

As organizations seek to secure their IT systems, both BetterCloud and Nightfall can help administrators save time and resources. However, each program has a different approach to security that’s worth considering. At a glance, here are the key differences and similarities between the two providers. 

NightfallBetterCloudProductCloud DLPSaaS Security Posture Management/SaaS Platform Management (SSPM/SPM)ImplementationVia APIVia APIRemediationMachine learning detection, can be fully automated with workflowsPredominantly for monitoring SaaS application configurations and user permissions, uses regex for limited data detection capabilitiesComplianceGDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS and more SOC 2, ISO 27001, CCPA and more Application CoverageSlack, GitHub, Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, Salesforce, Gmail, Fluent Bit, Cribl, Hanzo E-discovery, and any custom app via the Nightfall Developer PlatformCoverage for data protection mostly centers around Slack and Zendesk, providing SSPM functionality for dozens of additional applications. DetectorsPII, PHI, PCI, Secrets, Keys, Credentials, and more within text, messages, images (via OCR), and dozens of file typesUses regex and custom regex for data security.

BetterCloud: centralized SaaS administration

BetterCloud is a SaaS security posture management platform that centralizes the administration of all SaaS applications. As such, BetterCloud provides transparency and visibility that provides important context for cloud security practitioners; however, it’s very different from a cloud data loss prevention tool. 

BetterCloud organizes its service under three key activities: 

• Discover: learn what SaaS platforms your employees are using and any apps that have access to your IT environment (that could be creating vulnerabilities)
• Manage: centralize the management of your SaaS platform and automate workflows where possible in one hub
• Secure: monitor and remediate issues as they arise

BetterCloud’s offering provides a broad range of benefits. By centralizing SaaS programs in one hub, admins can automate workflows in one intuitive engine to improve productivity. Centralization empowers better reporting and analytics; users get comprehensive reporting and alert capabilities. BetterCloud offers identity and access management (IAM) tools. Users can leverage granular unified access controls and implement least privilege policies across their SaaS platforms. 

BetterCloud is built to be flexible, scalable, and customizable. It offers 60+ integrations with some of the most popular cloud platforms, including AWS, Google Workspace, and Atlassian. 

Nightfall: The easy way to secure your cloud data

Similarly, Nightfall is cloud-native data loss prevention that integrates with common, popular cloud programs such as Slack and AWS using APIs. The simplicity and flexibility of Nightfall make it an elegant, powerful solution for adding data security across popular cloud platforms. 

Nightfall is the industry’s first and only cloud DLP solution that deploys machine learning-trained detectors to automatically scan 150+ types of PII, PHI, PCI, credentials, secrets and more. Unlike BetterCloud, security is the primary focus of Nightfall, which automatically scans and monitors for instances where data is shared insecurely. 

Through APIs, Nightfall integrates deeply into cloud applications including Confluence, GitHub, Jira, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Nightfall scans both structured and unstructured data, with the capability to parse text from 100+ file types, including: customer chat logs, JSON objects, application logs, spreadsheets, PDFs, images, screenshots, and more. 

Our platform’s interface makes it easy to customize and configure detections for the data you wish to protect. Nightfall customers are typically up and running within a few minutes. For SaaS apps, there’s no additional configuration or setup required beyond installation — though developers also gain the ability to build their own integrations as needed.

Nightfall is built to help large enterprises not only protect valuable information, but also stay compliant with regimes like HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA. Perhaps most critically, we provide tools to help coach users on safe and compliant behavior. 

Nightfall has significant funding, operating history, and backing by leadership from Atlassian, Okta, and more; and executive leadership from Uber, Salesforce, Carta, Microsoft, Box, Slack. We provide a dedicated customer success manager, solutions architect, help center, and support.
Learn more about Nightfall’s cloud DLP capabilities by scheduling a call with one of our experts at the link below.