CRITICALSTART vs eSentire comparison

Critical Start and eSentire are both solutions in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category. Critical Start is ranked #32, while eSentire is ranked #26 with an average rating of 7.0. Critical Start holds a 0.8% mindshare in MDR, compared to eSentire’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Critical Start users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of eSentire users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CRITICALSTART and eSentire 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. eSentire Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. eSentire

October 2024

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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 eSentire is 1.6%, up from 1.5% 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

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

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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reviewer2136705

Independent Information Technology Consultant at a non-profit with 1-10 employees

A solid product for security, but the MSP program should be simpler

Their MSP program should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. They have two different kinds of people that sell their product. They have resellers and MSPs. A reseller would just be a company going and saying that I need licenses, and that in turn goes to eSentire, which then goes to the customer, and they do the transaction. We were on the MSP side. We were the ones who took a potential customer to eSentire, and we were the ones who closed the deals. We were the ones who went through everything, and in the end, it was just a notice saying that let's spin up a new tenant. That's the kind of difference we're talking about. From my standpoint, their MSP program, in general, needed to be worked on. It should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. I know it was in the process of being revamped, and as of the end of January, it was not finished. That was the last contact I had with eSentire, but I know that, at this point of the year, they were supposed to have rolled that new MSP program out to take care of all of the negative things. They were going through that process and making it much better. Once they get that implemented, they will be a good, solid vendor.

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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

"One of the main benefits of Binary Defense MDR is the ability to easily meet with their support team to discuss any issues we encounter."

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

"The customization has been the most valuable aspect and was really the reason we ended up selecting Binary Defense. They worked with us to provide exactly the level of support, features, response, and collaboration we needed."

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

"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 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."

"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."

"In the six months we have been with Binary Defense on this, they run with the ball. They take care of our problems. When we get a ticket, they do not just give us a report."

More Binary Defense MDR pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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 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."

"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."

More CRITICALSTART pros

"The managed detection response (MDR) product was the most valuable."

"The Managed Detection and Response (MDR) feature was really good and most valuable. We were handling very sensitive data, and we needed a quick response in real-time, which eSentire provided. It was also cost-effective, and their SOC team was very responsive."

Cons

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"The current reporting system could benefit from improvement."

"We should be able to isolate devices faster. They should shorten the time between clicking on a device to contain it and carrying out the action. That would be a welcome improvement."

"If I were shopping for an MDR solution today, I would not only look for a company that has the ability to alert, detect, and remediate, but also the ability to integrate vulnerability management. That's a big thing that they're lacking today."

More Binary Defense MDR cons

"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."

"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."

"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."

"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 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..."

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

"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."

"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

"From my standpoint, their MSP program, in general, needed to be worked on. It should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. I know it was in the process of being revamped, and as of the end of January, it was not finished."

"Its GUI can be a lot better."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"It has been good. We have saved money, and we have a better product."

"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."

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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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 MSP model we were in needed some work. It was not MSP-friendly, which means that an MSP is going to say that I have five thousand endpoints that I will eventually get to you, but for now, we're gonna start moving and let me purchase a thousand. So, you buy a thousand licenses, and you ramp up to that thousand. When you're ready to move on, you buy the next how many. That's the way an MSP likes to work, whereas it was a little bit different with eSentire. You had to purchase specific amounts for specific customers. It wasn't very friendly when it came to pricing for MSPs."

"It was cost-effective and not very expensive. Licensing was on a yearly basis. There were no additional costs to the standard licensing fee."

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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

11%

Healthcare Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 eSentire?

The managed detection response (MDR) product was the most valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for eSentire?

The MSP model we were in needed some work. It was not MSP-friendly, which means that an MSP is going to say that I ha...

See all answers

What needs improvement with eSentire?

Their MSP program should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. They have two different kinds ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 25% of the time

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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

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BlueVoyant CORE vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 24% of the time

ReliaQuest GreyMatter vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 22% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 21% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 21% of the time

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CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR vs eSentire

Compared 24% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs eSentire

Compared 20% of the time

Sophos MDR vs eSentire

Compared 11% of the time

Huntress vs eSentire

Compared 10% of the time

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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

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

November 2024

Download eSentire product report

Also Known As

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

Critical Start, CriticalStart

No data available

Learn More

Binary Defense

Critical Start

eSentire

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.

eSentire is the largest pure-play Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service provider, keeping organizations safe from constantly evolving cyber-attacks that technology alone cannot prevent. Its 24x7 Security Operations Center (SOC), staffed by elite security analysts, hunts, investigates, and responds in real-time to known and unknown threats before they become business disrupting events.

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

Melissa & Doug, Mavenir System, COMMONFUND

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. eSentire

October 2024

Free Report: CRITICALSTART vs. eSentire

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. eSentire and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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