This article takes an honest look at the features of Report DataDome.
Since you’re on the cside website, we acknowledge our bias. That said, we’ve built our case honestly and based our analysis on publicly available information, industry information, and our own or our customers' experiences.
If you want to verify their claims yourself, please navigate to their product pages.
| Criteria | c/side | Source Defense | Why It Matters | What the Consequences Are |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approaches used | Proxy + agent based detections but also offers crawler and offers a free CSP reporting endpoint | Crawler + JS-Based Detection | ||
| Real-time Protection | Attacks can occur between scans or in the excluded data when sampled | Delayed detection = active data breaches | ||
| Full Payload Analysis | Ensures deep visibility into malicious behaviors within script code itself | Threats go unnoticed unless the source is known on a threat feed | ||
| Dynamic Threat Detection | Identifies attacks that change based on user, time, or location | Missed detection of targeted attacks | ||
| DOM-Level Threat Detection | Tracks changes to the DOM and observes how scripts behave during runtime | Unable to identify sophisticated DOM-based attacks | ||
| 100% Historical Tracking & Forensics | Needed for incident response, auditing, and compliance | Needed for incident response, auditing, and compliance | ||
| Bypass Protection | Stops attackers from circumventing controls via DOM obfuscation or evasion | Stealthy threats continue undetected | ||
| Certainty the Script Seen by User is Monitored | Aligns analysis with what actually executes in the browser | Gaps between what’s reviewed and what’s actually executed | ||
| AI-driven Script Analysis | Detects novel or evolving threats through behavior modeling | Reliance on manual updates, threat feeds or rules = slow and error-prone detection | ||
| QSA validated PCI dash | The most reliable way to ensure a solution is PCI compliant is to conduct a thorough audit by an independent QSA | Without QSA validation, you rely entirely on marketing claims, which could result in failing an audit | ||
| SOC 2 Type II | Shows consistent operational security controls over time | Lacks verified security control validation, making it a risky vendor | ||
| PCI specific UI | An easy interface for quick script review and justification via one click or AI automation | Mundane tasks and manual research on what all the scripts do, which takes hours or days |
What is Source Defense
Source Defense specializes in client-side website security. They were founded in 2014 and, in their own words, built Source Defense with simplicity in mind.
How DataDome's Page Protect works
Source defense offers 2 methods:
“Source Defense Detect” - Crawler based
Source Defense Detect is a crawler that mimics a user visiting the same page, fetching the 3rd-party scripts that load. Crawlers can simulate user sessions, but they’re not actual users. And that difference matters, because they don’t capture the precise payload a real visitor receives during their browser session.
Most 3rd-party scripts use logic that adapts the response based on context. Location, device, time, and more. Crawlers are only one specific combination of this, so are unable to capture this correctly. They have some capabilities of mimicking different types of users, but not to the furthest degree.
Additionally, attackers can reasonably easily spot these crawlers and simply serve the non-altered script. The simple logic being: “if the request comes from a cloud provider, serve a clean script.”
Vendors that rely solely on crawlers typically need to buy extra intelligence from 3rd-parties. At cside, we also offer a crawler for situations where our proxy is not possible (niche cases), but with a major advantage: it’s powered by threat data we continuously gather from every site using our own proxy.
This doesn’t guarantee prevention, but it dramatically increases the chances of catching real-world threats compared to a crawler that depends on outside feeds.
Additionally, A crawler on its own cannot make you PCI DSS 4.0.1 (requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1) compliant. Read more on that here. We provide a combination with our other solutions where we can help you achieve PCI DSS compliance.
“Source Defense Protect” - JS Agent based
Source Defense also offers a JavaScript agent. Agent based approaches can make for a helpful dashboard with interesting information about scripts but they are not unbreakable and have a few issues by design.
JS agents are trigger based. Anything that doesn’t trigger, is considered good. This has the dangerous effect of “they do not know what they didn’t catch”.
These triggers are defined in the browser, where a bad actor can easily find out what behavior they are tracking. A bit like playing minesweeper but the bombs are exposed.
Another issue is that agent scripts rely on the same browser environment as the attacker. If a malicious script is already running, it can override core functions like the fetch). When the JS agent tries to send an alert, the attacker can intercept or redirect that request.
From the outside, it looks like everything’s working. But the alert never reaches its destination. The detection was triggered, but the signal was cut off before it left the browser.
This bypass method can be prevented and connections can be protected, but we haven’t seen any client-side security solution that is agent based adopt it.
Agents can show interesting information but any bad actor can work their way around them. There is also the common perception that they can make sites slower. This can be true but usually is not the case. We have decided not to rely on the agent method as attempting to perform detections at the same rank as the bad actor performing threats does not work reliably.
How cside goes further
cside primarily offers a hybrid proxy approach which sits in between the user session and the 3rd party service. It analyzes the served dependencies code in real-time before serving it to the user.
This allows us to not only spot advanced highly targeted attacks and alert on them, cside also makes it possible to block attacks before they touch the user's browser. It also checks the box for multiple compliance frameworks, including PCI DSS 4.0.1. We even provide deep forensics, including if an attacker bypasses our detections. Allowing you to more tightly scope the size of the incident us to make our detection capabilities better every day. No other vendor has this capability.
We believe this is the most secure way to monitor and protect your dependencies across your entire website. We've spent years in the client-side security space before we started cside, we've seen it all, this is the only way you can actually spot an attack.
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FAQ
Q: How does cside's hybrid proxy differ from Source Defense's browser-based detection?
A: The fundamental difference is prevention versus detection. Source Defense Protect relies on JavaScript-based detection that runs in browsers after scripts have already loaded, hoping to catch malicious behavior through behavioral analysis. cside's hybrid proxy intercepts every script before it reaches browsers, analyzing payloads and blocking malicious content at the network level. We prevent attacks from executing, while Source Defense detects them after they've already been delivered.
Q: Can attackers bypass cside's protection like they can with Source Defense's behavioral monitoring?
A: No, because cside's core analysis happens on our proxy, completely invisible to attackers. Source Defense's browser-based detection can be bypassed by sophisticated attackers who design their code to appear normal bypassing the JavaScript hooks client-side agents analyze. Since the monitoring happens in the browser, attackers can study and potentially disable the detection mechanisms. cside's proxy protection occurs server-side where attackers cannot see or interact with our security analysis, making bypass impossible.
Q: What forensic evidence does cside provide compared to Source Defense Protect?
A: Source Defense provides behavioral monitoring data when suspicious activity is detected, but cside captures and preserves the exact malicious code that was blocked. This gives you complete forensic evidence showing precisely what the attack looked like, how it worked, and what data it was designed to steal. Auditors get immutable proof of the actual attack rather than just behavioral analysis reports.
Q: How do compliance requirements compare between cside and Source Defense?
A: cside provides comprehensive PCI DSS compliance with immutable payload archives and detailed audit trails covering both requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1. Source Defense's behavioral approach provides detection logs but lacks the forensic-grade evidence and historical tracking that regulators increasingly require. Our approach creates the complete documentation that compliance officers need for regulatory reporting.
Q: Why is cside's proactive approach better than Source Defense's reactive detection?
A: Proactive blocking prevents attacks before any damage occurs, while reactive detection only alerts you after malicious scripts have already executed and potentially compromised user data. Source Defense's behavioral analysis means attacks can succeed before detection triggers. Cside ensures malicious scripts never reach browsers, providing guaranteed protection rather than hoping behavioral monitoring will catch threats.