CRITICALSTART vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR comparison

Critical Start and CrowdStrike are both solutions in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category. Critical Start is ranked #32, while CrowdStrike is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7. Critical Start holds a 0.8% mindshare in MDR, compared to CrowdStrike’s 16.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Critical Start users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of CrowdStrike users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CRITICALSTART and CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

October 2024

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Helped 814,763 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Binary Defense MDR

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Binary Defense MDR is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 16.4%, up from 15.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Featured Reviews

Rich Ullom

AVP, IT Security Compliance and Audit/Information Security Officer at Western Reserve Group

May 1, 2023

Worth the money, fantastic communication, and fast service with an average response time of about four minutes on an alert

This is my third SOC. I have never had anybody react as well. So, it's hard for me to provide something that they could do better because I'm really happy with them. I just signed another three-year contract with them. I don't find any downside to them, but if I have to put one, it would be consistent manpower or staffing. The only area where the solution can be improved is going to be with people. As they grow, they are struggling with the same thing that every other company is, which is getting talent and getting that talent to stay, but they've just revised their tiering system to go from a flat analyst and manager to a three-tier solution where it goes through two or three before it gets elevated. That seems to have worked out well, so if one level misses it, the next one picks it up, and it works out fine. Consistent staffing is the only challenge they have because when you're hiring level-one analysts, you go through them pretty quickly. You'll probably hire them at 50K or 55K, and after they do it for a year, they find out they can make 85K somewhere else, and they bounce. So, their turnover is a little high, but that's it.

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reviewer1395576

Cyber Security Manager at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 17, 2020

Offers the ability to close review tickets or alerts through a mobile phone and to interact with engineers on their side via the app

They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us. For example, if a locked account shows up, they could do a little extra digging to verify that the locked account was due to a bad password on the local system. They could just do a little extra digging within the Splunk environment instead of pushing it onto us to go do that extra little digging. We actually created dashboards for our help desk group to be able to hunt down locked down accounts. We've asked CRITICALSTART to start using that as a means of validating the lockdown accounts before they just start escalating them to us. If we go down the endpoint protection route, then I could probably have other input after I've used that for a while.

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Raj Choudahry

Chief Financial Officer at Nibbi Bros., Inc.

Mar 5, 2024

Helps improve our security posture, frees up IT staff time, and is stable

We use CrowdStrike Falcon Complete as our MSSP. We previously relied on antivirus products like Sophos and Malwarebytes, which seemed to function adequately. However, Sophos lacked centralized management, requiring our IT team to manually review over a hundred security notifications daily. This…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our mean time to response has gone down. We're much faster with direct response and have more investigative capabilities than we did before."

"Among the valuable features are the agent, continuous reporting, and dashboard. It has all the features we need and we haven't had to customize it, other than turning on certain features that we wanted."

"Binary Defense is comprehensive. We see most of the questionable activity. Once you see things a couple of times and are familiar with the processes, you know what those are. The level of activity is definitely favorable."

"The biggest aspect for us is that they are able to conform to our environment and utilize our tools. That way, we still maintain ownership of all the data and access to the applications, and we never lose control of the ability to run the solution ourselves if we need to."

"The most valuable features are the SIEM and the ticketing function; the latter is very smooth and easy to read and understand. We don't have any issues looking at the ticketing information when we're trying to identify what's going on."

"Binary Defense has a human service department that provides live monitoring for our systems."

"The speed at which their services are reactive is valuable. Nowadays, when a threat hits an endpoint, you've got minutes, not hours or days. Their average response time is about four minutes on an alert. For anything that needs to be sent to us, it's about fourteen minutes, which is pretty good. They're the third SOC that I've used in fifteen years. By far, they are the quickest ones to act. When you're looking at prevention, that's a key factor."

"The case interface is Binary Defense MDR's most valuable feature."

More Binary Defense MDR pros

"The most valuable feature of their service is their tuning... If we were getting 1,000 alerts a day without them, they tune it until they know what to do for 999 of them, and one will make it through to us per day. That tuning is the most valuable part of their solution."

"The new mobile app is awesome. It is one of the best I've ever seen. It's much better than its predecessor. It's more intuitive, a whole lot easier to navigate and get where you need to go. It's less repetitive and just generally easier to use. It allows me to not have to be sitting at my computer all the time. I can be on my phone or tablet or wherever I'm at. It makes it a lot easier to answer tickets and do that kind of thing."

"The main difference between the other options and this one is the quality of the personnel within the SOC. It's their knowledge and depth and the way they handle customers."

"Outside of using the platform to manage alerts, the feature of the service that we get the most value from is being able to reach out to them and say, "Hey, we might go buy a SIEM," for example. They give us their overview of what's out there, what they've dealt with, what they integrate with, and what that looks like. That's been pretty powerful over the years for us."

"The way that the user interface presents data enables our team to be able to make decisions significantly quicker, rather than have to dig into the details or go back to the original tools."

"From where we were prior to going into them, the service has increased our analysts’ efficiency to the point that they can focus on other areas of the business. It gives me the ability to allow analysts to do Level 3 and 4 work and stay out of the weeds of the alerts, where you tend to get alert fatigue. The service takes care of much of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 triage. It is more effective than what we had been used to, because it allows the filtering of Level 1 and Level 2 type alerts to be taken care of. This leaves less for us to handle, which is a good thing."

"I also use their mobile app. It's very easy to use and very convenient to be able to respond to alerts wherever you are. I love the app. You can respond and communicate, per ticket, with their SOC in near real-time. The response is very quick."

"There are two parts of CRITICALSTART's services that are most valuable to us. The MDR solution where they monitor our computers, laptops, and users across the board; and their knowledge of Palo Alto firewalls."

More CRITICALSTART pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the real-time visibility into what is happening in your endpoint."

"It has good visibility, works well, and it is fast."

"The most valuable feature is that it has a zero-day approach. It does not work with the signature itself. It looks into what is happening on an endpoint and protects you better against threats that are not yet known but are captured in a signature. It provides far better detection than when it is only signature-based. You get much quicker protection against any new threat. This is the most important feature of the CrowdStrike solution."

"Crowdstrike has better support than Carbon Black."

"The most valuable feature of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is the overall endpoint protection."

"The exposure management covers vulnerability management in discovery."

"The AI and the group knowledge base that they get from having multiple clients in the cloud is very useful to us."

"It is a very good solution. It can provide detection and response in an extensive way, and for an endpoint, it can integrate the information that comes from the servers."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR pros

Cons

"It's hard to think of anything that they need to improve on, but just to point out something, I would like to see them provide advanced XDR."

"We found a couple of bugs in the user interface."

"I would like to get more reports from Binary Defense about what they're blocking."

"The most significant area for improvement is in support for non-English speakers; we're a global organization, so many of our users are not English speakers, which can make interacting with them a challenge. There's no Chinese language support, so we must rely on what we can do with the internet. We don't expect Binary Defense to build a language staff, but details can get lost in translation when we assume the whole world speaks English."

"Binary Defense MDR could be even better with additional features, like automatic scans and file quarantine."

"I would like to see more frequent check-ins with our security status."

"The current reporting system could benefit from improvement."

"The only area I see for improvement with Binary Defense is their service portal. It could benefit from some enhancements."

More Binary Defense MDR cons

"During the six-month integration and rollout, there were some bumpy roads along the way. There were communication breakdowns between the project manager, CRITICALSTART leadership, and us (as the customer). I expressed my displeasure during the integration in their inability to effectively communicate when there were holdups or issues. They were going through some growing pains at that time, but they have been right there for us ever since."

"The updated UI is actually pretty bad. Regarding the intuitiveness, it is fairly easy to use, but the responsiveness, on a scale of one to 10, is a one. It's really poor performance."

"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us. For example, if a locked account shows up, they could do a little extra digging to verify that the locked account was due to a bad password on the local system. They could just do a little extra digging within the Splunk environment instead of pushing it onto us to go do that extra little digging."

"They just did a user interface overhaul to the website portal that you use for troubleshooting tickets. The old one was fine. The new one is not intuitive..."

"In terms of responsiveness, when I open up an alert, sometimes it takes a bit of time to load. However, it only happened once or twice."

"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support. I would like them to further their knowledge and ability to integrate with those tools. They have base integrations with everything, and we haven't come across anything. They should just continue to build on that API interface between their applications and other third-party consoles."

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."

"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now. That's something we've asked for, for years, and it just doesn't really seem like it's a priority."

More CRITICALSTART cons

"Crowdstrike could be cheaper. It's pricier than Carbon Black."

"The improvements needed for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete are in the way the agent updates. The overall management of endpoints needs to be better."

"The solution should be lighter because it currently uses a lot of computing sources."

"An MDM, Mobile Device Manager, should be added in the next release."

"The support is good from CrowdStrike Falcon Complete. We call them and we have a response immediately. They could improve by increasing their knowledge."

"Like any other solution, a lower price would make CrowdStrike Falcon Complete more appealing."

"The tool's customer service team’s inability to respond to our company’s queries is an area where improvements are needed."

"The biggest thing is to scan into your Office 365 environment, not from a cloud access security broker standpoint, but from the Secure Access Security Edge standpoint in protecting the Copilot ecosystem. Copilot has become more widely popular than I could have imagined. You need to back up and protect your Office 365 tools anyway, and Copilot is just a high sense of awareness."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing isn't that bad, it's very competitive. I don't feel that it's over-priced and I don't feel that it's under-priced."

"The solution's price is spot on; if anything, it's slightly below the norm for most services. Compared to building the same team internally, it would cost more to create the same amount of capability than what we get from an external team. Price-wise, Binary Defense is in a great spot."

"Binary Defense MDR is priced competitively and may be slightly lower than CrowdStrike."

"Binary Defense has changed its pricing model from being primarily based on the volume of data to one based on escalations and incidents they handle."

"The pricing is on target. Working with their sales team on pricing negotiations was a pleasant process. They were very respectful of the constraints we had and I feel that we're paying a fair price."

"The pricing is very good. They are definitely competitive and they were lower at the time that we went with them."

"From the initial cost that Binary Defense came in with, we pared it down quite a bit over the course of 30 or 60 days. My leadership would say that their cost was high, but realistically, they were in line with the market."

"After we acquired this platform, we met with a number of different vendors. Binary Defense came in with a proposal that was surprisingly affordable. In fact, we were able to recoup the cost of their services within a short period of time. This is because Binary Defense is able to provide the same level of security as a team of two or three in-house analysts but at a fraction of the cost. As a result, Binary Defense is saving us an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 per year."

More Binary Defense MDR pricing and cost advice

"There are contractual penalties if their SLAs are not met. This commitment was very important in our decision to go with this service, because not having downtime is extremely important to us. The providers has not missed an SLA in the 18 months that I have worked with them."

"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."

"The pricing has always been competitive. They have always been good to us. They will make it a fight. They don't try to hide anything; it's always been fully transparent and well-worth what we pay for it."

"Overall, for what I'm paying for it, and the benefit I'm getting out of it, it is right where it needs to be, if not a little bit in my favor. For what it costs me to actually have this service, I could afford one internal person to do that job, but now I have a team of 10 or more who are doing that job, and they don't sleep because they work shifts."

"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."

"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."

"As far as the expense goes, it's very competitive pricing and the services you get are almost like you have a person on your team."

"It is a fairly firm price. It is not the cheapest solution, but if you take the complete team into consideration, it is a great value."

"If you are looking from an IT standpoint, you get what you pay for. There is proactive monitoring in addition to the insurance policy. They do that better than others. Would you like it cheaper? Yes, but at what cost?"

"It is not cheap, and it is not overpriced. It positions itself in the upper half of pricing in the market. You can find a product that claims to do the same and is super cheap, but it'll be not at all good. You can find something that says it does everything in the world, and it is the best thing since sliced bread, but it would be incredibly expensive. Falcon Complete is neither of those. It is always best to go somewhere in the middle, but it is not in the middle. It is in the upper half. So, it is by no means cheap, but it is worth it. Its pricing is well fixed. Given what you get in return, you wouldn't feel bad paying for it. They have a great licensing model. You can add extra bells and whistles if you want. There is that ability to reduce the price by turning off certain features if you wish."

"I think the pricing is a little high."

"It's expensive. Its price varies because it's a modular solution."

"The licenses are sold per user."

"Pricing is reasonable."

"CrowdStrike offers solutions with the same functionality for both large enterprises and small to medium organizations with competitive pricing."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Healthcare Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Binary Defense MDR?

The most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Binary Defense MDR?

The pricing is very competitive; it's on par with or below others. For those sensitive to pricing, I'd advise that th...

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What needs improvement with Binary Defense MDR?

Sometimes, something may not install right; however, whenever we have challenges, they are very solution-oriented and...

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What do you like most about CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?

It is a cloud-based solution. You can easily scale it.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?

CrowdStrike has a reasonable price. It's a good price, but if CrowdStrike offered coupons or discounts on a monthly o...

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What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete?

The tool's customer service team’s inability to respond to our company’s queries is an area where improvements are ne...

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Comparisons

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 24% of the time

Darktrace vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 22% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Complete vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 22% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 16% of the time

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 15% of the time

More Binary Defense MDR Competitors

BlueVoyant CORE vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 23% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 22% of the time

ReliaQuest GreyMatter vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 21% of the time

eSentire vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 13% of the time

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Huntress vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Compared 13% of the time

Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Compared 12% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Compared 11% of the time

Blackpoint Cyber MDR vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Compared 9% of the time

Sophos MDR vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Compared 9% of the time

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Binary Defense MDR

November 2024

Download Binary Defense MDR product report

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

November 2024

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

November 2024

Download CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR product report

Also Known As

Binary Defense Vision, Binary Defense Managed Detection and Response, Binary Defense Managed Detection & Response

Critical Start, CriticalStart

Falcon Complete

Learn More

Binary Defense

Critical Start

CrowdStrike

Overview

Binary Defense provides a Managed Detection and Response service using an Open XDR strategy that detects and isolates threats early in the attack lifecycle. Expert security analysts in the Binary Defense Security Operations Center leverage an attacker’s mindset, monitoring your environments for security events 24x7x365 and acting as an extension of your security teams. When a security event occurs, Binary Defense analysts triage, disposition, and prioritize the event. Analysts conduct full kill chain analysis and supply tactical and strategic mitigation recommendations to your security team with the goal of increasing your organization’s security posture against the latest adversary threats.

Visit us online at https://www.binarydefense.com

The cybersecurity landscape is growing more complex by the day with the arrival of new threats and new tools supposedly designed for combating them. The problem is it’s all creating more noise and confusion for security professionals to sort through.

CRITICALSTART is the only MDR provider committed to eliminating acceptable risk and leaving nothing to chance. They believe that companies should never have to settle for “good enough.” Their award-winning portfolio includes end-to-end Professional Services and Managed Detection and Response (MDR). CRITICALSTART MDR puts a stop to alert fatigue by leveraging the Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) plus the industry-leading Trusted Behavior Registry, which eliminates false positives at scale by resolving known-good behaviors. Driven by 24x7x365 human-led, end-to-end monitoring, investigation and remediation of alerts, their on-the-go threat detection and response capabilities are enabled via a fully interactive MOBILESOC app.

CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR provides advanced endpoint protection through behavioral-based analysis, threat hunting, and zero-day attack prevention for devices, servers, clients, and mobile endpoints.

Organizations utilize CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR for comprehensive security management, including monitoring and detecting vulnerabilities, ransomware protection, and enhancing overall security postures. It replaces traditional antiviruses and seamlessly integrates with other security solutions to ensure proactive threat management.

What are the key features of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR?

AI and Machine Learning Detection: Identifies sophisticated threats using advanced algorithms.
Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: Delivers in-depth threat data for informed decision-making.
Real-Time Updates: Ensures constant protection against emerging threats.
Scalable Deployment: Adapts to organizational growth and changes.
Responsive Threat Hunting: Proactively searches for potential threats in the environment.
Minimal CPU Usage: Operates efficiently without hampering performance.
User-Friendly Dashboards: Simplifies monitoring and management tasks.
Strong Integration: Works well with other security tools and platforms.
Proactive Monitoring: Continuously observes systems to preemptively address issues.
Extensive Forensic Capabilities: Offers deep insights into security incidents.
Lightweight Endpoint Agent: Ensures endpoints are protected without affecting performance.
Efficient Incident Response: Quickly addresses and mitigates security breaches.
Broad OS Support: Compatible with a wide range of operating systems.

What benefits or ROI should be considered?

Reduced Downtime: Minimizes disruptions through swift threat detection and response.
Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens overall security through comprehensive protection measures.
Cost Savings: Lowers expenses by replacing multiple security tools with an integrated solution.
Scalability: Adapts to the growing and changing needs of the organization.
Proactive Threat Management: Identifies and mitigates threats before they cause significant damage.

In specific industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is implemented to ensure compliance with regulatory standards, protect sensitive data, and defend against sophisticated threats. These sectors benefit from CrowdStrike's robust endpoint protection mechanisms and detailed forensic capabilities, which help maintain security integrity and operational continuity.

Sample Customers

Securitas USA, Black Hills Energy, Lincoln Electric,The J.M. Smuckers Company, New York Community Bank, State of Connecticut, NCR

Information Not Available

Palm Beach State College, Mercedes-AMG, Pokemon, Telstra, Goldman Sachs, Zebra

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

October 2024

Free Report: CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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