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 8.6. Critical Start holds a 0.7% mindshare in MDR, compared to CrowdStrike’s 17.2% 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: July 2024).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

July 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Binary Defense MDR

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Binary Defense MDR is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR is 17.2%, up from 16.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2208147

Infrastructure and Security Services Director at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 9, 2023

Gives us visibility into current critical security events and improves our time to respond

They send us alerts and have done a really good job of eliminating the false positives. Early on, there were quite a few. But as they learned about our organization and the roles of individuals within it, that has drastically gone down. For example, initially, they would say so-and-so ran a script. Now, they know who our sys admins are and that running that script is typical for them. The benefits are the visibility into current critical security events and the effect on our time to respond. Binary Defense has helped reduce our security alerts because we know where our trouble points are, or if we're missing things, and what we need to deploy. It has given us visibility into what to put in and that is how it has helped us the most. I would estimate it has reduced our security alerts by 60 to 70 percent. It has improved our security posture significantly. And because they do a lot of the management for us, it has reduced our team's workload. We only have to work on the stuff that's identified as something we need to work on, so it has definitely helped performance.

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Justin Hadley

Sr. Manager, Security Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 29, 2020

The transparency of data in the platform is perfect: You see everything as they are seeing it

Their Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) engine, which is kind of their correlation engine, is by far and away one of the best in the business. We can filter and utilize different lists to build out different alerts, such as, what to alert on and when not to alert. This engine helps reduce our number of alerts and false positives. The service's Trusted Behavior Registry helps the provider solve every alert. The way that they have it built out is very intelligent. The way every alert comes in, it gets triaged one direction or another. If it is already a false positive, then it is still getting addressed and reviewed on a regular cadence. Also, true positive alerts get escalated to the appropriate personnel. Its mobile app is great. The ability just to be able to quick reference and see what's coming in when you're on the move or go. You don't always need to have your computer or laptop handy, because you can operate it just from the mobile app. It can communicate with analysts, which is great. The mobile app is great at affecting the efficiency of our security operations. Those guys are using it throughout the day, whether that be at the office, home, or off hours. Typically, they triage from the mobile app. Then, if an escalation needs to be done on a computer, they will pull out a computer. We were on the original UI for a few years, so the updated UI has been a refreshing change. It has significantly more ability to filter and translate data, then load that data. It is rather intuitive to click through for some of our junior analysts or interns, especially as we are starting to onboard and teach them different aspects of the security operations team.

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Kunal Bhujbal

Associate Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Feb 27, 2024

Uses AI-powered analytics, improves security posture, and automatically remediates threats

CrowdStrike's Falcon Complete service simplifies endpoint security by using a single sensor we install on our devices. Once installed, CrowdStrike's managed services take care of everything, including monitoring, threat detection, remediation, and alert management. Our customers only need to handle adding new users or groups. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete improves our ability to respond to and remediate cyber threats. CrowdStrike Falcon Complete boasts AI-powered analytics that hold significant promise. While I haven't used it personally, we'll be implementing it with a few clients. Once their quarterly reviews are completed, we should gain valuable feedback. The generative AI capabilities seem comprehensive, which is positive for our needs. The real-time threat-hunting capabilities stand out for us. Falcon Complete incident response feature works in the background where a team at the threat center reviews the detections and automatically remediates the threats. We're continually evolving our cybersecurity posture, and Falcon Complete has significantly improved our response time to cyber threats. We don't have an in-house SOC team so Falcon Complete has been crucial in helping with threat detection and resolution.

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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."

"The best part about Binary Defense MDR is that it runs on everything, and they keep an eye on things 24/7."

"The most valuable part of Binary Defense is its team of cybersecurity analysts. Their analysts filter out the noise and only forward the critical threats that require a response instead of false positives."

"Binary Defense's most valuable feature is the 24/7 monitoring and threat hunting. Their team checks the latest breaches and how they're done."

"With Binary Defense, we don't just get an alert, but also a detailed rundown of why they're alerting us on it. They tell us what was executed, or the username, script, or IP. That way, we're not wasting time investigating."

"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 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."

More Binary Defense MDR pros

"My impression of the transparency of the data is that it has good detail. It allows you to see how many events have come in, how many of those events have made it down to their analysts to review, and then however many from their analysts to be able to close out, have been able to been escalated to us. It's a good metric that we can share with my management. They see the value of what the SOC is bringing on top of what my team is already doing."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"There is a team of people who monitor our traffic and processes 24/7, so if anything raises a flag or alert, it will escalate back to me right away. That's the most incredible part: Humans working behind the scenes 24/7 to monitor our networks."

"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 quick interaction between the agents is the most valuable feature. If we have questions, they're quick to answer. If we make a change to our system, they quickly make the changes that are necessary to filter the logs correctly."

"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."

More CRITICALSTART pros

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

"The most valuable feature is the Managed Detection and Response."

"I find the incident management feature valuable because it identifies new types of viruses and sends an alert to the console administrator to check the hardware."

"Their intelligence is really good. The security whitepapers that they write are outstanding. They handle it all for the clients. CrowdStrike Complete is managed by CrowdStrike. They only call a client if there is a problem that they can't address. They pretty much contain and eradicate. This is not something that every vendor provides."

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

"It's a stable application. It is one of the most stable out of all the other market applications, especially if you're talking about within the EDR platform."

"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that we can track all of it in one place across all those different locations."

"I have found AI technology most valuable in the solution."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR pros

Cons

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

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

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

"While my understanding is that they're working on this, I would like to see some more of the quantification or reporting."

"It's sometimes difficult to know when to engage Binary Defense or TrustedSec, their sister company. TrustedSec is more focused on offensive security, as opposed to the defensive security that the MDR solution provides. It would be awesome if there were a better bridge between that relationship for when we need to get more proactive services or when we need to do a penetration test."

"We found that an earlier version of the agent had high memory usage and that was a bit concerning, but we raised the concern with their support team and they immediately replied that they had noticed the same thing and had a candidate fix already available... it totally fixed the issue."

"The current reporting system could benefit from improvement."

"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."

More Binary Defense MDR cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The only thing I can think of that I would like to see, and I'm sure they could work this into a service pretty easily, is not only alerts on issues that are affecting my company, but some threat intelligence of a general nature on what's out there in the environment. That might be a nice add-in."

More CRITICALSTART cons

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

"The licensing is a bit complex."

"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."

"The reporting could be better. It's not as good as it could be."

"We'd like the pricing to be a bit lower in the future."

"The technical support is satisfactory, but there is room for improvement to enhance it."

"As of recent, their MITRE scores were not as good as in years past."

"I would improve the Operational Technology environment functionalities."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"It's valued at the right price. Even with the number of endpoints we have, we don't feel that it's a lot more than any competitor. In fact, it might be less expensive when you look at the fact that you're getting a full flex SOC out of it along with the tools."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More Binary Defense MDR pricing and cost advice

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"While CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive, it offers great features and functionality."

"There are different lengths of licenses available, such as three and five years. The price of CrowdStrike Falcon Complete is expensive."

"It is expensive, but looking at the capabilities that it brings, it is reasonable. There are no additional costs to the licensing costs. If you increase the number of licenses, support is included."

"There is a standard license to use CrowdStrike Falcon Complete."

"The pricing is a little bit higher than other OEM competitors in the market, like SentinelOne and Trend Micro."

"Falcon Complete isn't too pricy."

"There is a license for this solution and everything is included. However, The price of the could be lower."

"CrowdStrike has a reasonable price."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

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?

We find CrowdStrike Falcon Complete to have a steeper learning curve when it is deployed in certain industries such a...

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Comparisons

Darktrace vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 26% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 22% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Complete vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 19% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 18% of the time

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Binary Defense MDR

Compared 15% of the time

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Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 30% of the time

BlueVoyant CORE vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 28% of the time

ReliaQuest GreyMatter vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 23% of the time

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Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR vs CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

Compared 13% of the time

Huntress 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 11% 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

September 2024

Download Binary Defense MDR product report

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

September 2024

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR

September 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

July 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: July 2024.

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