ROUNDUP · SEC BREACH-DISCLOSURE TRACKERS
The best SEC breach-disclosure trackers in 2026, honestly compared
Since the SEC's cybersecurity disclosure rules took effect, material incidents at US public companies surface as Item 1.05 Form 8-K filings on EDGAR. Every tool below works from that same free public data — they differ in whether they alert, classify, or archive it, and in what they charge. Facts come from each vendor's own public site, verified July 2026, and the free options are ranked on their merits.
The tools
1. BEST FREE PRIMARY SOURCE — THE DATA EVERYONE ELSE BUILDS ON
SEC EDGAR full-text search (DIY) (efts.sec.gov / sec.gov/edgar)
EDGAR is free, public, and authoritative. Full-text search can surface Item 1.05 8-K filings; RSS feeds exist per company. The cost is your time: you build the queries, poll, and read the filings. Every tool on this list, ours included, links back here.
Pricing: Free (US government service).
2. BEST FREE ALERTING ON RAW EDGAR FILINGS
KFilings (kfilings.com)
Free, unlimited SEC EDGAR email alerts with no registration — by company, ticker, or CIK, and by filing type including Item 1.05 specifically. Real-time, daily, or weekly delivery. Run as a public service by its creator. If you just need to know a filing happened, this is hard to beat at $0.
Pricing: Free (as of July 2026).
Full comparison: BreachTrigger vs KFilings →3. BEST RESEARCH DATABASE FOR INCIDENTS AND CYBER GOVERNANCE
Board Cybersecurity (board-cybersecurity.com)
Structured trackers of incidents, companies, governance, and regulatory actions — states 20,534 incidents across 23,612 companies, aggregating SEC disclosures, state AG notifications, and news. Built for benchmarking and board-level context rather than same-day alerting.
Pricing: Free account tier; paid plans not publicly priced (as of July 2026).
Full comparison: BreachTrigger vs Board Cybersecurity →4. OUR PRODUCT · BEST FOR CLASSIFIED, SECTOR-FILTERED SAME-DAY ALERTS
BreachTrigger (breachtrigger.com)
Our product — so judge this entry accordingly. BreachTrigger polls EDGAR every 30 minutes, distinguishes Item 1.05 material incidents from voluntary Item 8.01 disclosures by reading the filing text, tags sector and ticker, and links every alert to the primary filing. Compared to the free options above, what you're paying for is classification, filtering, and a curated free weekly sector digest — not access to the data, which is public.
Pricing: Free weekly sector digest; Instant Alerts $199/month (as of July 2026).
5. BEST GENERAL-PURPOSE MONITOR IF EDGAR IS ONE OF MANY PAGES YOU WATCH
Visualping (visualping.io)
Watches any web page and alerts on changes via email, SMS, Slack, or Teams, with AI judging significance. Pointed at EDGAR search pages it becomes a DIY disclosure watcher; its real strength is breadth across all your monitored pages. States 2 million users.
Pricing: Free tier + paid plans; prices not on the homepage (as of July 2026).
Full comparison: BreachTrigger vs Visualping →
Frequently asked questions
- What is an Item 1.05 8-K filing?
- Under the SEC's cybersecurity disclosure rules, a US public company must file a Form 8-K under Item 1.05 within four business days of determining a cybersecurity incident is material. Companies also sometimes disclose incidents voluntarily under Item 8.01. All of these filings are public on SEC EDGAR.
- Do I have to pay to track SEC breach disclosures?
- No. EDGAR is free, and KFilings sends free raw filing alerts including Item 1.05 (as of July 2026). Paid tools charge for interpretation: classification (material 1.05 vs voluntary 8.01), sector tagging, curation, or historical benchmarking. Pay only if that layer saves you real time.
- How fast do breach disclosures become public?
- The filing is public on EDGAR the moment it's accepted — typically before press coverage, which lags by hours to days and skips many filings. Tools that poll EDGAR directly (BreachTrigger polls every 30 minutes) or forward its alerts are as close to the source as it gets. Always verify the filing itself on sec.gov/edgar before acting.
Start with the free digest
BreachTrigger's weekly digest is free — the cheapest way to evaluate the whole category is to read what the monitoring actually catches.
See free and paid options →