Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs GitGuardian Platform comparison

Check Point Software Technologies and GitGuardian are both solutions in the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) category. Check Point Software Technologies is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5, while GitGuardian is ranked #6 with an average rating of 9.2. Additionally, 100% of Check Point Software Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of GitGuardian users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

GitGuardian Platform and Check Point CloudGuard Code Security both compete in the security domain, each specializing in different aspects of it. GitGuardian appears to have an edge in internal secrets management, offering fast remediation and effective real-time alerts, while Check Point excels in infrastructure risk assessments with strong automation features.

Features: GitGuardian Platform is recognized for its extensive detection capabilities, efficiently identifying and managing secrets. It provides real-time alerts and maintains low false-positive rates, aiding seamless integration with various tools. Check Point CloudGuard Code Security stands out for its automation in security processes and comprehensive code assessments, being part of Check Point's broader security ecosystem. It excels in real-time threat detection, which is crucial for environments with complex infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: GitGuardian users seek better customization options and enhanced integrations, along with simplified historical scanning processes. There is also a call for clearer remediation instructions and the desire for a mobile app. In Check Point CloudGuard Code Security, users face challenges with limited documentation and support, desiring easier third-party tool integrations and improved geolocation handling. Both solutions would benefit from more tailored user experiences and expanded integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GitGuardian Platform is praised for its ease of use and excellent customer support, with a responsive technical support team ensuring a positive implementation experience. Check Point CloudGuard Code Security users report less need for direct technical support. However, the complexity and newness of the tool pose challenges, offset by its simple setup once understood.

Pricing and ROI: GitGuardian's pricing is generally viewed as reasonable, providing clear ROI for smaller teams, though larger organizations may find it costly despite its security insights. Check Point CloudGuard Code Security is considered affordable, offering significant ROI through enhanced security postures. The purchasing process is sometimes seen as less straightforward. Both products deliver good ROI in protecting sensitive information, with pricing fairness perceptions varying by organization size and needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs. GitGuardian Platform Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs. GitGuardian Platform

November 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

Read full review

Nagendra Nekkala.

Senior Manager ICT & at Bangalore International Airport Limited

Good security and functionality with helpful support

The security on offer is great. It's secure in terms of testing all the workloads. We can test across any workload or multiple clouds. It offers unified prevention. It also offers posture management by verifying proper scanning. We use the GSL builder. It's easy to write customer rules or policies using it. Of course, you do need proper training on the product first. It takes around one week to get trained. We've been able to reduce human error, and you can build the rules for better coverage. It provides functionality across cloud providers. The solution helps us save time. We've reduced the amount of time spent by 25%. Its unified security management console is a very complete dashboard. We can see all security threats and can gain visibility into what is happening. We have access to automation and can monitor the security of IT systems. The product offers role-based access control so that we can set up different privileges for admin users. Cloud Guard Spectrum is good for automating our organization's security across assets, workloads, and multiple clouds. With it, we have advanced pre-prevention across the cloud security network. It works for on-premises also. We can easily determine our organization's security posture. It will ensure my application's availability time across the enterprise. Network security helped us reduce our compliance and audit activities. We've saved about 20% of our time. Having a cloud detection response helps to very quickly identify security threats in our environment. It's automated so it saves us time. That way, people can work on other projects. On any given day, we're spending 20% less time in general worrying about detection and response. Our security operations are saving a lot of time using a unified platform.

Read full review

Joan Ging

Head of Development at Inhabit

It dramatically improved our ability to detect secrets, saved us time, and reduced our mean time to remediation

While they do offer some basic reporting, more comprehensive reporting would be beneficial in the long run. This would allow me to demonstrate the value of the product over time to continue to effectively budget for this subscription, especially as they add features that may come at an additional cost. I appreciate the improvements made to reporting over the past year, but continued development in this area will be appreciated. We have encountered occasional difficulties with the Single Sign-On process. There is room for improvement in its current implementation. It works, but was not quite as smooth as the rest of the GitGuardian experience.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"The UI is good."

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

More Cloudflare pros

"The data center security system has provided real-time analytics on performance and data configuration processes."

"Its fastest and most outstanding characteristic is ensuring a development line that will not lead to applying applications or code development."

"Compared to what we used before, it's helping us to be more efficient in managing our traffic."

"Automation has helped a lot to identify and automatically execute policies, rules, and blocks due to its machine learning."

"The implementation of this tool for security management and control is very simple."

"You can maintain a legal framework structure at all times."

"We have a strong sense of security assurance when utilizing CloudGuard, as it consistently delivers outstanding protection capabilities."

"Knowing what measures we must take allows us to reduce costs associated with security in the cloud by providing early identification of a risk or a possible security breach."

More Check Point CloudGuard Code Security pros

"The most valuable feature is its ability to automate both downloading the repository and generating a Software Bill of Materials directly from it."

"It actually creates an incident ticket for us. We can now go end-to-end after a secret has been identified, to track down who owns the repository and who is responsible for cleaning it up."

"What is particularly helpful is that having GitGuardian show that the code failed a check enables us to automatically pass the resolution to the author. We don't have to rely on the reviewer to assign it back to him or her. Letting the authors solve their own problems before they get to the reviewer has significantly improved visibility and reduced the remediation time from multiple days to minutes or hours. Given how time-consuming code reviews can be, it saves some of our more scarce resources."

"There is quite a lot to like. Its user interface is fantastic, and being able to sort the incidents by whether they are valid or for a certain repository or a certain user has been very beneficial in helping investigate what has been found."

"The secrets detection and alerting is the most important feature. We get alerted almost immediately after someone commits a secret. It has been very accurate, allowing us to jump on it right away, then figure out if we have something substantial that has been leaked or whether it is something that we don't have to worry about. This general main feature of the app is great."

"GitGuardian Internal Monitoring has helped increase our secrets detection rate by several orders of magnitude. This is a hard metric to get. For example, if we knew what our secrets were and where they were, we wouldn't need GitGuardian or these types of solutions. There could be a million more secrets that GitGuardian doesn't detect, but it is basically impossible to find them by searching for them."

"GitGuardian has pretty broad detection capabilities. It covers all of the types of secrets that we've been interested in... [Yet] The "detector" concept, which identifies particular categories or types of secrets, allows an organization to tweak and tailor the configuration for things that are specific to its environment. This is highly useful if you're particularly worried about a certain type of secret and it can help focus attention, as part of early remediation efforts."

"The most valuable feature of GitGuardian is that it finds tokens and passwords. That's why we need this tool. It minimizes the possibility of security violations that we cannot find on our own."

More GitGuardian Platform pros

Cons

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"Technical support is lacking."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

More Cloudflare cons

"I would like this solution to be extended to cellular devices or tablets."

"The costs are not transparent."

"The ease of use could be better."

"They could include web functionalities such as sandboxing."

"The enhancements are needed in the logging system and log management processes."

"The solution should improve false-positives."

"We need to have many of the baselines or development guides providing less complex writing or development."

"I am satisfied with the performance and results enhanced by this product since we deployed it."

More Check Point CloudGuard Code Security cons

"GitGuardian could have more detailed information on what software engineers can do. It only provides some highly generic feedback when a secret is detected. They should have outside documentation. We send this to our software engineers, who are still doing the commits. It's the wrong way to work, but they are accustomed to doing it this way. When they go into that ticket, they see a few instructions that might be confusing. If I see a leaked secret committed two years ago, it's not enough to undo that commit. I need to go in there, change all my code to utilize GitHub secrets, and go on AWS to validate my key."

"They could give a developer access to a dashboard for their team's repositories that just shows their repository secrets. I think more could be exposed to developers."

"There are some features that are lacking in GitGuardian. The more we grow and the more engineers we have, the more it will become difficult to assign an incident because the assignment is not automatic. I know they are working on that and we are waiting for it."

"One improvement that I'd like to see is a cleaner for Splunk logs. It would be nice to have a middle man for anything we send or receive from Splunk forwarders. I'd love to see it get cleaned by GitGuardian or caught to make sure we don't have any secrets getting committed to Splunk logs."

"It would be nice if they supported detecting PII or had some kind of data loss prevention feature."

"For some repositories, there are a lot of incidents. For example, one repository says 255 occurrences, so I assume these are 255 alerts and nobody is doing anything about them. These could be false positives. However, I cannot assess it correctly, because I haven't been closing these false positives myself. From the dashboard, I can see that for some of the repositories, there have been a lot of closing of these occurrences, so I would assume there are a lot of false positives. A ballpark estimate would be 60% being false positives. One of the arguments from the developers against this tool is the number of false positives."

"The purchasing process is convoluted compared to Snyk, the other tool we use. It's like night and day because you only need to punch in your credit card, and you're set. With GitGuardian, getting a quote took two or three weeks. We paid for it in December but have not settled that payment yet."

"We have been somewhat confused by the dashboard at times."

More GitGuardian Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"It is extremely affordable and high value for cost."

"It could be cheaper. When GitHub secrets monitoring solution goes to general access and general availability, GitGuardian might be in a little bit of trouble from the competition, and maybe then they might lower their prices. The GitGuardian solution is great. I'm just concerned that they're not GitHub."

"The pricing is reasonable. GitGuardian is one of the most recent security tools we've adopted. When it came time to renew it, there was no doubt about it. It is licensed per developer, so it scales nicely with the number of repos that we have. We can create new repositories and break up work. It isn't scaling based on the amount of data it's consuming."

"It's a little bit expensive."

"The internal side is cheap per user. It is annual pricing based on the number of users."

"The pricing and licensing are fair. It isn't very expensive and it's good value."

"We don't have a huge number of users, but its yearly rate was quite reasonable when compared to other per-seat solutions that we looked at... Having a free plan for a small number of users was really great. If you're a small team, I don't see why you wouldn't want to get started with it."

"You get what you pay for. It's one of the more expensive solutions, but it is very good, and the low false positive rate is a really appealing factor."

"I am only aware of the base price. I do not know what happened with our purchasing team in discussions with GitGuardian. I was not privy to the overall contract, but in terms of the base MSRP price, I found it reasonable."

More GitGuardian Platform pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

Government

11%

Media Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

What do you like most about Spectral?

We have had a number of real events where developers accidentally made commits of API keys, and we were able to detec...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Spectral?

Pricing and licensing modules need to be improved.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Spectral?

The solution should improve vulnerability in-depth, false-positive reduction, integration with other tools, performan...

See all answers

What do you like most about GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?

It's also worth mentioning that GitGuardian is unique because they have a free tier that we've been using for the fir...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?

The pricing for GitGuardian is fair.

See all answers

What needs improvement with GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?

We'd like to request a new GitGuardian feature that automates user onboarding and access control for code repositorie...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 48% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Snyk vs Check Point CloudGuard Code Security

Compared 100% of the time

More Check Point CloudGuard Code Security Competitors

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs GitGuardian Platform

Compared 43% of the time

GitHub Advanced Security vs GitGuardian Platform

Compared 23% of the time

Snyk vs GitGuardian Platform

Compared 17% of the time

Cycode vs GitGuardian Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Veracode vs GitGuardian Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More GitGuardian Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

December 2024

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security

December 2024

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security report

Download Check Point CloudGuard Code Security product report

Buyer's Guide

GitGuardian Platform

December 2024

Download GitGuardian Platform product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Spectral

GitGuardian Internal Monitoring

Learn More

Cloudflare

Video not available

Check Point Software Technologies

GitGuardian

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security enhances application and site security in Microsoft Azure, detecting vulnerabilities, preventing breaches, and safeguarding against malicious activities while ensuring compliance and improving code quality.

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security, designed for cloud and on-premise environments, scans applications configurations, detects exposed credentials, and aligns with legal frameworks. It offers simple implementation, centralized management, customizable rules, and improved security practices. It supports multiple clouds, offers real-time data loss prevention, advanced posture management, and remediation guidance. It enhances policy enforcement and provides powerful analytics, intuitive dashboards, and automation for reduced human error and better security.

What are the key features of Check Point CloudGuard Code Security?

Simple Implementation: Easy to deploy and start securing environments quickly.
Broad Language Validation: Supports multiple coding languages for fast identification of security issues.
Real-Time Data Loss Prevention: Continuously monitors and mitigates data leakage risks.
Powerful Analytics: Provides in-depth insights and detailed reports for better decision-making.
Centralized Management: Allows control and oversight from a single interface.
Intuitive Dashboards: User-friendly displays for monitoring security status and trends.
Improved Security Practices: Encourages the adoption of better security measures.
Strong Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats rapidly.
Automation: Reduces human error by automating routine security tasks.
Customization: Enables tailored security rules to meet specific needs.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Check Point CloudGuard Code Security?

Reduced Human Error: Automation and robust features lessen the risk of mistakes.
Enhanced Policy Enforcement: Ensures consistent application of security policies.
Time Savings: Streamlined processes save valuable time for security teams.
Secure Remote Connections: Protects data during remote access.
Fast Risk Identification: Quickly identifies and addresses vulnerabilities.
Advanced Posture Management: Comprehensive oversight of security posture.

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security is vital in industries where securing cloud and on-premise environments is critical. For instance, in finance, it aids in regulatory compliance and protects sensitive data. Healthcare relies on it for safeguarding patient information, while tech companies use it to protect intellectual property during development. In retail, it enhances security against cyber threats, securing transaction data and customer information.

GitGuardian helps organizations detect and fix vulnerabilities in source code at every step of the software development lifecycle. With GitGuardian’s policy engine, security teams can monitor and enforce rules across their VCS, DevOps tools, and infrastructure-as-code configurations.

Widely adopted by developer communities, GitGuardian is used by more than 500,000 developers and is the #1 app in the security category on the GitHub Marketplace. GitGuardian is also trusted by leading companies, including Instacart, Genesys, Orange, Iress, Beyond Identity, NOW: Pensions, and Stedi.

GitGuardian Platform includes automated secrets detection and remediation. By reducing the risks of secrets exposure across the SDLC, GitGuardian helps software-driven organizations strengthen their security posture and comply with frameworks and standards.

Its detection engine is trained against more than a billion public GitHub commits every year, and it covers 350+ types of secrets such as API keys, database connection strings, private keys, certificates, and more.

GitGuardian brings security and development teams together with automated remediation playbooks and collaboration features to resolve incidents fast and in full. By pulling developers closer to the remediation process, organizations can achieve higher incident closing rates and shorter fix times.

The platform integrates across the DevOps toolchain, including native support for continuously scanning VCS platforms like GitHub, Gitlab, Azure DevOps and Bitbucket or CI/CD tools like Jenkins, CircleCI, Travis CI, GitLab pipelines, and many more. It also integrates with ticketing and messaging systems like Splunk, PagerDuty, Jira and Slack to support teams with their incident remediation workflows. GitGuardian is offered as a SaaS platform but can also be hosted on-premise for organizations operating in highly regulated industries or with strict data privacy requirements.

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Doddle, Bangalore International Airport, Grupo financiero ACOBO, DigitalTrack

Automox, 66degrees (ex Cloudbakers), Iress, Now:Pensions, Payfit, Orange, BouyguesTelecom, Seequent, Stedi, Talend, Snowflake...

Buyer's Guide

Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs. GitGuardian Platform

November 2024

Free Report: Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs. GitGuardian Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs. GitGuardian Platform and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.

DOWNLOAD NOW

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Check Point CloudGuard Code Security vs. GitGuardian Platform report.

See our list of best Data Loss Prevention (DLP) vendors and best DevSecOps vendors.

We monitor all Data Loss Prevention (DLP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.