ZeroFox vs. Bolster: Which DRP Platform is Better for Brand Security?

The Crimes We Accept as Normal

Are digital threats like domain squatters, phishing redirects, and brand scrapers the inevitable cost of doing business online? Many businesses believe these sorts of malicious activities outside their corporate networks can’t be stopped, only taking action when customers complain, or worse, when law enforcement calls. 

“People often see these things as nuisances,” says Josh Mayfield, Sr. Director, Product Marketing at ZeroFox.

“They think they just have to deal with this kind of stuff as the tax for being a digital organization. But they’re not a nuisance, they’re crimes.”

This type of passive acceptance can end badly as the damage spreads, customers lose trust, and revenue drops. What’s more, your company could be liable for any harm done if criminals successfully exploit your brand.

So, how can you protect yourself? 

ZeroFox and Bolster are two digital risk protection (DRP) platforms that claim to provide the external cybersecurity you need to safeguard your brand from today’s threats.

Read on to compare ZeroFox vs. Bolster across critical security areas and discover which is the clear choice for enterprise protection.

Why External Threat Platforms Matter

Businesses have long invested in internal cybersecurity systems like MFA, EDR/antivirus, WAFs, network segmentation, encrypted backups and SIEM/SOC to protect their internal networks. However, between 62 and 96% of breaches begin as external attacks, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. From fake domains and dark web credential sales, to executive impersonation schemes that cost organizations up to $2 billion in losses annually, attempts by threat actors to exploit online business operations grow more aggressive each year. ZeroFox has observed total external attacks targeting customers increasing by 125%, with a staggering 521% year-over-year increase in phishing attacks alone. 

DRP platforms are designed to deal with these kinds of threats from outside your corporate perimeter. They patrol the vast wilds of the open, deep, and dark webs to detect, prevent, and neutralize cyber threats targeting your brand, not just your network.

"These platforms crawl through the Internet the same way that Google does, but the difference is they're biased toward trying to find that which is bad," Josh Mayfield explains

“They dig deeper by going out and clicking on suspicious links, mapping connections between websites, and uncovering hidden behavior."

DRP platforms leverage multiple other detection techniques beyond basic web crawling. They monitor domain registration patterns to identify suspicious lookalike domains before they're weaponized, analyze SSL certificate patterns that indicate potential phishing infrastructure, and track social media platforms for impersonating accounts and brand abuse. 

Many also integrate with threat intelligence feeds to cross-reference discovered threats against known attack indicators, while some draw on machine learning algorithms to identify subtle patterns in website structure, content, and behavior that human analysts might miss. 

The most sophisticated platforms can even simulate user interactions to trigger hidden malicious functionality. For example, a given page might look legitimate until a DRP platform "pokes" it, and it reveals its true role in malware distribution or phishing operations. 

But which DRP solution can match the speed and sophistication you need to handle the cyber threats of today and tomorrow? Let’s compare ZeroFox vs. Bolster and see who delivers on their promises.

ZeroFox vs. Bolster: What Do They Actually Do?

Threat Detection Coverage

The scope of monitoring plays a big part in how well a platform protects your digital assets. 

Bolster takes a focused approach, concentrating primarily on phishing site detection and domain monitoring. It advertises AI-powered detection with high accuracy for specific threat types, but accuracy means little if the platform isn't looking in the right places. 

While the platform monitors 14 social media platforms and includes basic dark web monitoring capabilities. That’s 25% of the social media platforms out there, and Bolster’s narrower scope creates blind spots. This limitation is particularly dangerous when threats can emerge from unexpected vectors or new platforms that aren't yet in Bolster's monitoring portfolio.

Remember, threat actors don’t confine themselves to a handful of major sites. They exploit emerging social channels, code repositories, messaging platforms, paste sites, and countless regional or niche networks. By leaving these areas uncovered, organizations relying solely on Bolster face significant blind spots.

ZeroFox takes a more comprehensive approach. The platform monitors all major and emerging social networks, thousands of dark web forums, mobile app stores, code repositories, paste sites, and collaboration platforms. Combined with direct access into threat channels and continuous infiltration of hostile groups, this breadth ensures enterprises see threats wherever they emerge—not just on a select few sites.

ZeroFox views digital risk protection as fundamentally requiring a comprehensive approach. The platform puts its money where its mouth is by monitoring, among others:

• Social media platforms across all major networks
• Emerging regional platforms
• Thousands of dark web forums
• Domain infrastructure
• DNS records
• Mobile app stores
• Code repositories
• Paste sites
• Collaboration platforms

This breadth of coverage ensures threats get detected regardless of where they come from or how they behave.

Threat Intelligence and Analysis

Like many companies, Bolster relies heavily on AI algorithms to deliver their promised services. But this can result in both a reduction in alert quality and an excessive number of missed alerts. Limited analyst support also constrains its ability to provide strategic insights or handle complex investigations. 

"They're very good at being niche, but their AI has been pre-trained, and the last training run they probably did 6 months ago,” Mayfield explains. 

“They lock themselves into limited data so that they can actually train the models. It's not here right now. It’s not up to date on what's happening with threats."

This means Bolster's pre-trained models can't adapt to new scenarios or novel techniques until the next training cycle. Meanwhile, threat actors continue evolving their tactics daily, pulling ahead of static AI models. 

On the other hand, ZeroFox insists that effective digital risk protection requires more than just technology—it also needs human expertise to interpret context and make key decisions. That’s why every ZeroFox customer receives OnWatch managed services from dedicated threat analysts with backgrounds in military intelligence, law enforcement, and cybersecurity who understand their specific threat landscape. By combining these 100+ threat analysts with over 12 billion threat intelligence records, and automated detection across more than 1 billion content sources, ZeroFox delivers contextual, prioritized intelligence round-the-clock. 

Takedown and Disruption Capabilities

Of course, threat detection means nothing without effective remediation. 

Bolster offers automated phishing site takedowns for certain providers, with reports of very good speeds for simple cases—some users report takedowns in under 10 minutes for straightforward phishing sites. However, Bolster’s small partner network and limited social media takedown capabilities create barriers to comprehensive threat removal, meaning the takedown speeds aren’t always so impressive. One reviewer of Bolster reported frustration with performance on G2: "Sometimes post requesting takedown of suspicious or fake posts on social media/web URLs the Bolster team takes a lot of time may be months."

Bolster also highlights an average takedown time of 60 seconds for malicious content. While that figure sounds impressive, it oversimplifies the reality. True takedowns often require coordination with registrars, hosts, or platform owners, which typically takes hours or even days—even for the most efficient teams. The “60-second” claim applies only to the simplest scenarios, such as a site hosted on a cooperative registrar where a bot can quickly issue a takedown request.

For more complex threats, automation alone isn’t enough. Even Bolster acknowledges in its product materials that a dedicated analyst team steps in when takedowns are more complicated or when providers are less responsive. In practice, that means the same human expertise Bolster downplays ends up being essential to getting results.

Leveraging over 50 patents and a Global Disruption Network of partner ISPs, hosts, registrars, CDNs, and social platforms, ZeroFox goes beyond simply removing individual posts or profiles; instead, it systematically traces connections to identify and disrupt entire attacker campaigns. 

When threats are identified, ZeroFox's in-house Universal Takedown Services work directly with platform partners to take down fraudulent accounts, websites, domains, impersonation profiles, phishing sites, and other malicious content across thousands of networks and ensure the threats stay permanently removed. 

ZeroFox executes over 1 million takedowns annually—including 40,000+ malicious domain takedowns, and a 300% year-over-year increase in successful takedowns in the past year alone. By dismantling the underlying infrastructure that cybercriminals rely on, the platform protects organizations' brands, executives, and customers from ongoing digital harm, and prevents future attacks. 

ZeroFox also collaborates with Google, integrating threat detection and rapid takedown capabilities to defeat phishing attacks across 5 billion devices worldwide.

This partnership enables quick identification and mitigation of malicious websites, with responses in as little as 15 minutes. 

Advanced Protection Features

Bolster's features focus primarily on anti-phishing capabilities combined with basic brand monitoring. While effective within its niche, the platform lacks the breadth needed for organizations requiring modern essentials like broad threat Intelligence, geopolitical context, executive protection, physical security monitoring, or professional breach response.

ZeroFox addresses today’s reality with comprehensive advanced protection features that extend far beyond basic monitoring and takedown.

The platform’s Brand Protection covers 6,200+ brands, generating over 1 million alerts monthly to identify and stop brand abuse before it damages reputation or revenue. ZeroFox’s Domain Protection capability scans 65 million URLs and eliminates tens of thousands of malicious domains annually. 

Other capabilities include:

• Attack Surface Management: Continuously discovers and assesses external assets
• Physical Security Intelligence: Provides real-time alerts for threats to people, locations, and events.
• Breach Response Services: Help organizations navigate the complex aftermath of attacks
• Executive Protection Service: Safeguards over 21,000 high-value individuals worldwide, monitoring not just digital threats but physical security risks as well

Return on Investment and Business Value

Financial considerations should no doubt play a crucial role in any ZeroFox vs Bolster evaluation. A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study found ZeroFox customers achieve an impressive 267% ROI. This exceptional return stems from both immediate savings and long-term risk reduction:

Reduced Risk of Executive Impersonation

Executive impersonation has become one of the most damaging forms of digital attack, with each incident costing organizations up to $44,000. But these attacks go beyond immediate financial loss—they damage executive credibility, enable further social engineering, and  open the door to physical security risks. 

ZeroFox can identify the dangers thanks to comprehensive monitoring across all channels where impersonation might occur, from social media to dark web forums to domain registrations. 

The platform's rapid takedown capability can then neutralize impersonation attempts within hours, rather than the days or weeks required by manual processes. 

With Executive Protection services covering thousands of executives globally, ZeroFox provides both digital and physical threat monitoring that Bolster simply cannot match. 

Lower Fraud Takedown Costs

Manual takedown processes drain resources and budgets. Each takedown request requires research, documentation, communication with platforms, and follow-up—often taking days per incident. When multiplied across hundreds or thousands of threats monthly, the costs become staggering. Organizations can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on labor costs alone for threat identification and remediation.

ZeroFox's automated remediation eliminates these costs while dramatically increasing coverage. The platform identifies exponentially more spoofed domains, fake mobile apps, and fraudulent social media accounts than manual processes could ever discover. More importantly, it resolves them faster than human teams could manage. Organizations report finding and removing threats they never knew existed, preventing damage that would have far exceeded any platform investment.

On top of this, ZeroFox's Global Disruption Network uses community intelligence to quickly block malicious sites and disrupt large-scale attacks. Partners share attack indicators, expand remediation, and implement proactive disruption to reduce threat exposure. The network rapidly responds to threats with coordinated actions, significantly speeding up takedown processes and preventing future attacks.

Operational Efficiency Gains

Uniting security provisions into ZeroFox's platform offers operational benefits that go beyond immediate cost savings. Security teams eliminate tool sprawl and reduce licensing costs by replacing multiple point solutions with a single, comprehensive platform. This consolidation also simplifies training, reduces context switching, and improves analyst productivity by introducing unified workflows.

With the platform's automation handling routine threats, skilled analysts are free to focus on emerging threats, develop better security strategies, and support business initiatives instead of spending hours on manual takedown requests. Reporting becomes streamlined with single-source metrics across all external threats, improving visibility for leadership and simplifying compliance requirements.

ZeroFox vs. Bolster Market and Industry Recognition

Industry recognition provides an objective measure of platform capabilities and customer satisfaction. The contrast between ZeroFox and Bolster in this area is striking.

Bolster has earned recognition as one of the Top 5 Best Workplaces in San Francisco, achieving first place for Employee Wellness. While admirable, this recognition speaks to company culture rather than platform capabilities or customer satisfaction.

ZeroFox, by contrast, has earned extensive industry recognition for its platform capabilities. In Summer 2024, the company achieved seven G2 Leader badges:

1. Leader – Grid® Report for Dark Web Monitoring
2. Leader – Grid® Report for Brand Protection (First place for three consecutive quarters)
3. Leader – Grid® Report for Fraud Detection
4. Leader – Grid® Report for Threat Intelligence
5. Leader – Grid® Report for System Security
6. Leader – Grid® Report for Web Security
7. Leader – Grid® Report for E-Commerce

As if that wasn’t enough, the 2024 Cyber Defense Magazine Global Infosec Awards and Cybersecurity Excellence Awards added even more accolades:

• Publisher's Choice in Attack Surface Management
• Winner in External Attack Surface Management
• Winner in Cybersecurity for Financial Services
• Best Cybersecurity Podcast

Forrester named ZeroFox best-in-class for brand intelligence and takedown services, awarding perfect 5/5 ratings for Digital Risk Protection capabilities, in-house takedown solutions, intelligence Request for Information responses, and analyst tradecraft.

By the Numbers: What Users and Reviewers Say

Ratings and reviews on sites like PeerSpot, G2, and Gartner Peer Insights tell us a lot about user experiences and satisfaction in the ZeroFox vs. Bolster face off. 

On PeerSpot, ZeroFox holds the #2 position in Digital Risk Protection with 17.2% mind share, while Bolster ranks #18 with just 1.2% mind share, a huge 16-point gap that reflects fundamental differences in platform capabilities and customer success. PeerSpot users also rate ZeroFox 8.6 out of 10, with 100% willing to recommend the solution.

Other user ratings reinforce this disparity. ZeroFox maintains strong ratings across all major review platforms, earning 4.5 out of 5 stars from 55 G2 reviews, with 70% of those being five-star ratings. On Gartner Peer Insights, the platform scores 4.7 out of 5 stars, with 95% of users willing to recommend it.

Bolster shows promise but lacks the depth of customer validation. Despite being founded in 2017, the platform has only earned 4 reviews on G2 in all that time. But it does manage to score 4.6 out of 5 stars. It fares a little better on Gartner Peer Insights, where it’s been given 4.4 out of 5 stars, while PeerSpot lists insufficient reviews to generate a rating. This limited review volume raises questions about how little enthusiasm Bolster customers seem to have.

Here’s a breakdown of ratings across the three review sites:

User Ratings Comparison: ZeroFox vs. Bolster

Gartner Peer Insights — Detailed Scores (out of 5)

Key Observations:

1. Review Volume Disparity: ZeroFox has significantly more reviews across all platforms (55 on G2 vs. 4 for Bolster), providing more statistical reliability.
2. Recommendation Rates: Both platforms have high recommendation rates (95% for ZeroFox, 93% for Bolster), though ZeroFox's is based on a much larger sample size.
3. Market Position: ZeroFox's #2 ranking with 17.2% mind share versus Bolster's #18 ranking with 1.2% mind share demonstrates significant difference in customer attitudes.
4. Data Reliability: Bolster's ratings on some platforms (like PeerSpot with 0 reviews) indicate limited customer engagement available for comprehensive assessment.

The ZeroFox vs. Bolster Verdict: Size and Scope Matter

The choice between ZeroFox and Bolster ultimately depends on your organization's size, complexity, and threat landscape.

Consider Bolster if you prefer basic anti-phishing protection on a limited budget. Bolster's AI-focused approach works well for simple, predictable threats against limited digital assets. So, organizations with narrow domain monitoring requirements and smaller-scale operations may find Bolster's focused approach sufficient.

"If you have one website, one domain, a couple of products and are a minor kind of organization, it's likely that Bolster’s AI will be able to keep up with your needs,” Mayfield says. 

But modern enterprises operate across dozens of platforms, hundreds of domains, and thousands of digital touchpoints. They face sophisticated threat actors who constantly evolve tactics. Static AI models trained on historical data simply cannot keep pace.

“If you're any sort of larger business, forget Bolster. You're likely so labyrinthian and so spread out and ethereal in your digital presence, that their models just can't learn where you are or see where you need help."

“Bolster operates with less and less data because they don't have a ZeroFox-level capability of going out there and clicking everything on the Internet and scraping what happens." 

“Meanwhile, combining advanced AI with human expertise, ZeroFox evolves with threats and learns something new every single second.”

Go with ZeroFox if you need comprehensive protection across all digital channels with global threat intelligence and expert analysis. 

The platform sets the standard for digital risk protection, trusted by thousands of organizations including public sector agencies, financial institutions, media companies, technology firms, and retail enterprises. 

The platform's proven scale with millions of successful takedowns, advanced capabilities including executive and physical security protection, and 24/7/365 support with managed services make it ideal for enterprises. The demonstrated 267% ROI provides clear business justification for the investment. ZeroFox delivers the protection modern organizations require.

ZeroFox: Your Complete Solution

Online threats evolve daily and every hour without comprehensive protection increases your risk of brand damage, financial loss, and fading customer trust. 

But you don’t need to accept digital crime as the tax you pay for your digital business.

Schedule your ZeroFox demo today and see exactly how ZeroFox protects organizations like yours with a personalized demonstration of our platform's capabilities.