Obsidian Security vs KnowBe4
Side-by-side comparison of AI visibility scores, market position, and capabilities
SaaS security platform for behavioral threat detection and identity risk management across enterprise SaaS applications. Newport Beach CA; raised $90M+; Obsidian detects compromised accounts and insider threats using behavioral baselines across Microsoft 365 and Salesforce.
About
Obsidian Security is a SaaS security and identity threat detection company founded in 2017 and headquartered in Newport Beach, California. The company was founded by former executives and engineers from Carbon Black, CrowdStrike, and the NSA who applied endpoint detection and response principles to the SaaS domain. Obsidian's platform monitors user behavior across SaaS applications to detect account compromise, insider threats, and data exfiltration by analyzing activity patterns — logins, API calls, data access, sharing events — against behavioral baselines built for each user.\n\nObsidian raised $90 million across three rounds from investors including Norwest Venture Partners, IVP, and Greylock Partners. Its platform integrates with major enterprise SaaS applications including Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, ServiceNow, GitHub, Workday, and more than 40 other applications. Rather than relying solely on configuration checks, Obsidian focuses on runtime behavioral analytics: detecting when a compromised account is performing unusual data exports, when a user accesses records far outside their normal work patterns, or when a service account begins making API calls it has never made before.\n\nThe platform also covers SaaS identity risk management, inventorying privileged accounts, dormant accounts, and over-permissioned users across all integrated applications. Security teams can use Obsidian to reduce their SaaS attack surface by identifying and remediating excessive access, and to respond to active threats with detailed activity timelines that provide forensic evidence for incident investigations. Obsidian's combination of posture management and behavioral detection positions it between pure SSPM tools and identity threat detection and response (ITDR) platforms.
KnowBe4 is the world's largest security awareness training platform, delivering simulated phishing, compliance training, and human risk management to 65,000+ organizations.
About
KnowBe4 is a cybersecurity company headquartered in Tampa, Florida that operates the world's largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, serving over 65,000 organizations across 11 million users. Founded in 2010 by Stu Sjouwerman, the company was built on the thesis that the human element — employees who click phishing links, reuse passwords, and inadvertently install malware — represents the primary attack vector in the majority of successful breaches, and that continuous, measurable security awareness training combined with simulated phishing exercises is the most effective way to reduce this human risk. KnowBe4 went public in 2021 and was taken private by Vista Equity Partners in 2023 in a transaction valued at approximately $4.6 billion.
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