Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Cerbos VS Bytesafe

Compare Cerbos VS Bytesafe and see what are their differences

Cerbos logo Cerbos

Cerbos helps teams separate their authorization process from their core application code, making their authorization system more scalable, more secure and easier to change as the application evolves.

Bytesafe logo Bytesafe

A better way to control your software supply chain
  • Cerbos Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-21

Cerbos is a self-hosted, open source authorization layer that separates your authZ logic from your core application code.

Cerbos allows for swift and secure set up and modification of complex roles and permissions. Unlike traditional methods that require intricate code manipulation, Cerbos simplifies the process by making changes through configuration. This reduces risks associated with authZ changes, such as downtime or security incidents.

Cerbos' structure, independent from the app code, allows both business stakeholders and non-expert engineers to understand the permissions structure. A broader range of stakeholders can make changes to the authZ logic without needing extensive coding knowledge or risking the stability of the core application.

In an era where authZ logic is business logic, the ability to quickly adapt and scale this element is vital. Cerbos makes this possible, facilitating an agile response to new markets and customer needs while maintaining a mature product.

  • Bytesafe Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-09-17

Cerbos features and specs

  • Flexibility
    Cerbos is designed to be highly flexible, allowing for complex policy definitions and use cases that can accommodate a wide range of authorization needs.
  • Scalability
    Cerbos can handle large volumes of authorization requests efficiently, making it suitable for applications that need to scale.
  • Compatibility
    It can be easily integrated with various existing systems and technologies, thanks to its support for standard protocols and formats.
  • Open Source
    As an open-source project, Cerbos offers transparency, extensibility, and community support, allowing users to contribute and customize their own solutions.

Possible disadvantages of Cerbos

  • Complexity
    The flexibility and features of Cerbos might introduce a steeper learning curve for new users who are not familiar with authorization systems.
  • Resource Intensive
    Depending on the deployment and configurations, running a Cerbos instance might require significant resources, which could be a consideration for smaller projects.
  • Limited Documentation
    Users might find that certain advanced features or integrations are not as well-documented, potentially leading to difficulties in implementation.

Bytesafe features and specs

  • Security
    Bytesafe offers robust security features, including the ability to quarantine vulnerable packages and control the use of open-source dependencies, ensuring that vulnerabilities are mitigated before they can affect your application.
  • Dependency Management
    It provides effective tools for managing and maintaining dependencies, allowing organizations to keep track of all packages and ensuring that the correct versions are used in development and production.
  • Private Registries
    Bytesafe allows users to create private registries, offering a secure and controlled environment for managing proprietary packages and internal dependencies.
  • Policy Enforcement
    The platform supports policy enforcement to ensure compliance with licensing requirements and internal standards, reducing legal risks and maintaining consistency across projects.
  • Integration
    Bytesafe integrates with existing tooling and workflows, providing seamless adoption into CI/CD pipelines and ensuring that it fits naturally into the software development lifecycle.

Possible disadvantages of Bytesafe

  • Cost
    As a premium service, Bytesafe may be costly for small teams or individual developers, potentially limiting access to its advanced features for those with limited budgets.
  • Complexity
    Setting up and managing packages with Bytesafe can be complex, especially for users unfamiliar with dependency management, potentially requiring additional time for learning and adaptation.
  • Limited Ecosystem Support
    While Bytesafe supports several major programming languages, it may not cover all technology stacks, which could be a limitation for teams working with niche or emerging languages.
  • Feature Overlap
    Some organizations may find that their existing tools provide similar features, leading to redundancy and potential conflicts between systems managing the same dependencies.

Cerbos videos

Cerbos - How It Works - Intro

Bytesafe videos

No Bytesafe videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Cerbos and Bytesafe)
Developer Tools
67 67%
33% 33
Code Collaboration
0 0%
100% 100
Security
100 100%
0% 0
Open Source
100 100%
0% 0

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Cerbos and Bytesafe.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Cerbos's answer

  • Go
  • Protobuf
  • gRPC
  • CEL

What makes your product unique?

Cerbos's answer

Cerbos stands out in the crowded authorization landscape due to its innovative approach to managing roles and permissions. Unlike traditional systems that embed authorization logic within an application's core code, Cerbos introduces a standalone, self-hosted, stateless service, transforming intricate coding tasks into simpler configurations. This separation not only streamlines the authorization process but also reduces potential security risks and system bottlenecks.

Being open-source, Cerbos fosters a strong community backing, ensuring its evolution aligns with real-world developer needs. Its adaptability is evident in its support for multiple SDKs, YAML configuration, and dynamic context handling, which cater to a wide range of environments and use-cases. This flexibility is further enhanced by Cerbos Cloud, a premium solution offering advanced policy management tools.

Furthermore, Cerbos emphasizes transparency, allowing both technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand and modify the permissions structure. This democratization of authorization logic management reduces reliance on specialized coding expertise. Additionally, its commitment to robust security features, including audit logging and risk mitigation, ensures that businesses can trust Cerbos to safeguard their authorization processes.

In essence, Cerbos' unique blend of innovation, adaptability, community support, and security focus reshapes the way businesses approach and manage authorization, making it a game-changer in the field.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Cerbos's answer

Cerbos' primary audience is best described as forward-thinking engineering leaders at the helm of emerging startups, particularly within the FinTech and Software Development sectors. These leaders typically oversee small to medium-sized teams, with 5-20 engineers, in companies that have a workforce ranging from 0 to 100 employees. Their technological stack prominently features Kubernetes (k8s), indicating a modern and scalable infrastructure.

Financially, these companies are in their early growth stages, having secured funding between 0 to 10 million dollars, primarily in the Seed to Series A range. This suggests that they are in a phase of rapid expansion and are actively seeking solutions that can seamlessly scale with their growth.

The primary objectives of Cerbosโ€™ users revolve around finding a reliable solution to their authorization challenges, ensuring that the chosen solution can be implemented without disruptions, and that it scales effortlessly as the company grows. In essence, the Cerbos champion is a visionary engineering leader, keen on adopting innovative solutions that align with their company's rapid growth trajectory.

What's the story behind your product?

Cerbos's answer

Cerbos, co-founded by Emre and Charith, emerged from a vision to revolutionize the way authorization is approached in modern, cloud-native applications. The duo recognized a persistent challenge in software development: the immense time and effort developers invest in crafting and continually updating custom permissions. This repetitive cycle not only consumes valuable time but also diverts attention from the core essence of product development.

Driven by this realization, Emre and Charith embarked on a mission with Cerbos: to make the implementation of access-control as seamless and painless as possible. Their goal was to eliminate the need for repeatedly writing and rewriting custom permissions implementations. Instead, they envisioned a world where developers could channel their energies and creativity into building outstanding products that resonate with and delight their customers.

Who are some of the biggest customers of your product?

Cerbos's answer

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Cerbos's answer

A person should choose Cerbos over its competitors for several compelling reasons:

Innovative Design: Unlike many competitors, Cerbos separates the traditionally embedded authorization logic from the application's core code. This standalone, stateless service simplifies authorization changes, converting intricate coding tasks into straightforward configurations.

Open-Source Flexibility: Cerbos' open-source nature ensures continuous evolution based on real-world feedback. This community-driven approach ensures that the product remains relevant and adaptable to changing needs.

Transparency and Inclusivity: Cerbos' structure allows a broader range of stakeholders, both technical and non-technical, to understand and modify the permissions structure. This democratizes the authorization process, reducing the dependency on specialized coding expertise.

Robust Security: Cerbos places a strong emphasis on security, offering features like audit logging and risk mitigation. This commitment ensures businesses can trust Cerbos to maintain the integrity of their authorization processes.

Flexibility and Control: Cerbos provides complete control over its deployment, scaling, and monitoring. Unlike solutions that are solely cloud-based or hardcoded, Cerbos strikes a balance between flexibility, control, and security.

Clear Value Proposition: Cerbos offers straightforward pricing and a user-friendly approach, contrasting with competitors that may have complex pricing structures or less intuitive systems.

Community and Support: As an open-source project, Cerbos boasts a strong community backing, ensuring users have access to a wealth of knowledge and support.

In summary, Cerbos' unique blend of innovation, flexibility, transparency, and security makes it a superior choice in the authorization landscape.

User comments

Share your experience with using Cerbos and Bytesafe. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Bytesafe should be more popular than Cerbos. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Cerbos mentions (6)

  • Show HN: Authorization game โ€“ matching requests to permission policies
    I wanted to get back to coding and play around with a simple way to explain how our product works(permission management platform, https://cerbos.dev). So I built the Cerbos Game, where players match incoming requests to permission policies and decide to ALLOW or DENY them; just like our product does for software apps. This game disrupted our engineering teamโ€™s daily work as they competed to beat the high score.... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Nuxt authorization: How to implement fine-grained access control
    In this tutorial you will learn how to use Cerbos to add fine-grained access control to any Nuxt web application, simplifying authorization as a result. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • ๐Ÿ–Œ๏ธโš™๏ธ Innovate Like Da Vinci: Blending Art and Science in Software Development
    In my work with Cerbos, I apply the lessons learned from Da Vinci to tackle authorization challenges. Our approach is to create solutions where functionality seamlessly integrates with developer experience. Constantly iterating and viewing the tools through the users' lens, helps ensure that our access control solutions are robust and dev-friendly. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Feedback needed: Cerbos Hub is now in public beta!
    Hello fellow devs! I'm with Cerbos (https://cerbos.dev/), a tool designed to manage who can do what in your software applications. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Show HN: Cerbos Hub โ€“ Implement roles and permissions in your app in minutes
    Hello HN! I'm on the DevRel team at Cerbos (https://cerbos.dev/), a tool designed to manage who can do what in your software applications. For a couple of years now, Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is naming authorization a top 10 API security risk: https://owasp.org/API-Security/editions/2023/en/0x11-t10/ We are thrilled to announce that Cerbos Hub is now in public beta! - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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Bytesafe mentions (10)

  • Protect Your System from Install Scripts in npm packages
    Another option is to use a Dependency Firewall, such as Bytesafe, which allows you to quarantine unwanted open source packages with vulnerabilities or non-compliant licenses. The platform provides a policy engine where you define the open source usage and security rules and the Dependency Firewall does the enforcement. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • Why has software supply chain security exploded?
    There are a few companies in this space that are trying to do the "Security Seal of Approval" thing to various degrees. Tidelift is one company that has a bunch of "catalogs"[0] of packages. I'm not sure how their package metadata is generated though -- maybe semi-manually? There is also Bytesafe[1] which is supposed to help give you a way to "firewall" yourself from unapproved dependencies. I don't think they... - Source: Hacker News / almost 4 years ago
  • Another way to do the same service as bytesafe? Stop npm install on insecure packages
    I was trying bytesafe.dev recently and it was good for me, as it would stop the npm install of any package that had a security issue. But now that I am out of the free trial, it is to limited for me without paying for an upgraded plan. And their support never replies to my requests. Source: over 4 years ago
  • Create a free private Maven repository with Bytesafe
    These steps will let you get your own private repository using Bytesafe:. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
  • Time for secure dependencies? Private Maven repository for Java, Kotlin, Scala
    When using private repositories from Bytesafe, public dependencies will be proxied, pulling any required (and allowed) version into your private Maven repository. Using public repositories like Maven Central as an upstream makes sure you can access your organization's required open source dependencies - while maintaining security and control. - Source: dev.to / over 4 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Cerbos and Bytesafe, you can also consider the following products

Aserto - Fine-grained, scalable authorization in minutes

Verdaccio - Verdaccio is a lightweight private npm proxy registry built in Node.js

authzed - The platform to store, compute, and validate app permissions

vulert - Vulert notifies you if a SECURITY ISSUE is found in any of the open-source software you use. No installation needed.

Oso - A batteries-included system for authorization.

Byteimpulse - Modern Digital Solutions for Business Growth