How Security Ratings Drive Actionable Risk Reduction, From Findings to Resolution

Cybersecurity teams face an enormous amount of pressure to manage risk with limited time, tools, and people. And as organizations grow and vendors shift, risks change constantly. Security scores about your supply chain cybersecurity highlight where attention is needed, helping you brief the board and insurers with clear answers about security posture and risk.

Many companies assume they already know where vulnerabilities lie. In truth, many lack that clarity. 

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a call to action for us all to test those assumptions and to make sure you can validate your visibility into the risks you’re responsible for.

Ratings aren’t another check-the-box or compliance metric. Used well, they help cut through the noise and provide clarity, helping teams spot risk early instead of reacting after a breach.

We share security ratings with organizations to spark informed conversations across supply chains about risks that are already there. It’s about providing a shared starting point for risk conversations across teams and industries. It’s about providing a data-driven view that helps leaders focus on what matters most.

Without a clear line of sight into what risks are in your cybersecurity ecosystem, managing that risk is impossible.

Why SecurityScorecard Doesn’t Charge To Improve Scores

Correcting findings or updating your score is always free with SecurityScorecard. We believe every organization should have the right to a trusted and transparent rating regardless of whether they are a customer. We also believe every organization should have the ability to challenge or correct their score, customer or not.

That’s why we provide both. We’ve heard stories of other companies that require a contract just to gain the ability to correct errors and misunderstandings. We don’t do that, and we never will.

We provide free access because ratings only matter when they reflect reality. Free corrections ensure trust, accuracy, and fairness for everyone.

How this works for your team

Unlimited access to your own security rating is included in our Free Plan. You can view all of your organization’s internet-facing assets in real-time and use our straightforward refute process.

As part of our paid plans, such as our Business and Enterprise accounts, we offer continuous monitoring for your entire supply chain, automated reports, and daily alerts and APIs for vendor monitoring.

How SecurityScorecard’s Scoring Works

You deserve clarity and trust when it comes to assessing your security posture. Our methodology is transparent and publicly available, so you can see exactly how your score is calculated.

To build your scores, we use an “outside-in” approach, non-intrusively evaluating an organization’s security profile at scale. We scan the entire IPv4 web space, with over 4.1 billion routable IP addresses every seven days across more than 1,400 ports.

We collect and enrich 99% of our own data, which we supplement with approximately 40 third-party data sources and 1.5 Terabytes of data ingested daily. 

Think about SecurityScorecard ratings like financial credit ratings: Backed by data and proven to predict risk. Just as a low credit rating is associated with a greater probability of default, a lower cybersecurity rating is associated with a higher probability of sustaining a data breach.

Validation testing has demonstrated that companies with an ‘F’ rating have a 13.8x greater likelihood of incurring a data breach compared to companies with an ‘A’.

To ensure fair comparisons, our methodology also includes a principled size normalization scheme. This statistical framework ensures scores make sense regardless of an organization’s size. This prevents larger companies with more digital assets, for instance, from being downgraded just for their scale.

Independent Validation Confirms Attribution Accuracy

The dynamic nature of the internet means IP addresses and communication ports can be reassigned daily or even hourly. Changes in domain ownership can take time to propagate. 

An independent assessment from Online Business Systems found 95% attribution accuracy at SecurityScorecard despite the fact that the internet is constantly changing. The validation assessment report found:

• SecurityScorecard’s overall attribution accuracy is 95%.
• SecurityScorecard has a 94% accuracy rate for attributing IP addresses.
• SecurityScorecard has a 100% accuracy rate for DNS records.

This shows organizations can rely on our ratings to reflect reality with confidence. 

If you ever need to flag a finding, our refute process ensures they are reviewed quickly and transparently. We have an exceptionally low refute rate of 0.015% (as of September, 2025), but on average, we resolve your refutes within 48 hours. Accepted changes update your scorecard within 48 to 72 hours.

We follow the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s principles for fair and accurate security ratings, ensuring any rated organization can see and challenge their rating regardless of whether they are a customer.

SecurityScorecard as a Partner

As our supply chains grow more complicated and interconnected by the day, you need more than just a score. You need a signal you can trust to help you gain control of your cyber risk before bad actors take advantage of your blind spots.

SecurityScorecard Ratings give you continuous visibility into your organization’s cyber hygiene, supporting risk management programs, executive reporting, or cyber insurance underwriting.

And access to your score and fast and fair corrections are just one piece of the pie. AI-powered features generate remediation requests and classify issue criticality, helping your team focus attention where it matters most. Validation testing demonstrates a strong correlation between our ratings and the likelihood of a data breach, confirming that addressing the issues we identify is an effective way to reduce your risk.

Our mission is to help organizations understand, improve, and communicate their cybersecurity risk to the board, employees, and vendors, ultimately building a more resilient supply chain for everyone. We’ve shaped our methodology with industry standards in mind through collaborations with leaders such as NTT and T-Mobile.

More than 3,000 organizations trust SecurityScorecard to strengthen resilience across their supply chains to date. 

And with transparent scoring, free access to your own rating, and a rapid, fair review process, you gain the visibility and confidence needed to improve your security posture, and build a safer, more resilient supply chain together.

Get Your Free Score

We have never and will never charge you for access to your own security rating. Get your score for free by visiting SecurityScorecard today.