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CRITICALSTART vs Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.0
CRITICALSTART offers cost-effective surveillance, reduces alerts, enhances security support, and saves 50-60 hours weekly, improving team balance.
Sentiment score
7.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR enhances ROI through automation, integration, and efficient mature SOC processes, reducing investigation time.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.1
CRITICALSTART offers 24/7 responsive support with knowledgeable analysts, prioritizing user needs despite occasional delays, ensuring customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.0
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR support is knowledgeable but varies in response times and service quality, needing possible improvements.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Organizations seek comprehensive endpoint coverage, appreciate multi-site deployment, and consider expanding usage with additional affordable features.
Sentiment score
7.4
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is scalable, integrating well with APIs, though large deployments may face challenges and latency issues.
 

Stability Issues

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
7.8
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is stable and reliable, though minor bugs occur during updates and with oversized storage environments.
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek better alert prioritization, Slack integration, UI, data security, communication, threat intelligence, storage control, and API integration.
Cortex XSOAR requires easier setup, better IoT support, improved UI, more connectors, flexible pricing, and enhanced documentation.
The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers appreciate CRITICALSTART's competitive pricing, transparency, managed services satisfaction, and value, despite some cost concerns.
Cortex XSOAR is seen as expensive yet valuable for security, with variable pricing and discounts post-Palo Alto acquisition.
 

Valuable Features

CRITICALSTART excels in rapid alert management, user-friendly tools, 24/7 monitoring, Zero-Trust model, and seamless data integration.
Cortex XSOAR offers user-friendly automation, integration, and playbook creation with efficient remediation, security features, and AI-enhanced threat intelligence.
Execution of automatic tasks for collecting, enriching, and correlating security events from hundreds of different technologies.
 

Categories and Ranking

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
31st
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (32nd)
Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is 13.1%, down from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1395576 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
NikhilSharma2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Ability to multiple playbooks to fetch data from multiple firewalls and utomated several tasks, including vulnerability scans and SOCL (Security Orchestration, Automation
Recently, they started implementing microservices in XSOAR, which has improved quality and addressed previous issues. However, they should focus more on licensing costs. The user licensing fees are quite high. For example, I received a quote for XSOAR, and it was $12,000 per user per year. If you have a SOC team of 30 members/analysts, you're looking at a substantial expense. They should consider reducing these costs since this high pricing seems to be more about profit. So, there is room for improvement in the pricing. Moreover, the reporting and dashboard features are decent but could be improved. The user interface (UI) is quite heavy and takes time to load, which is a major drawback.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
10%
Retailer
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The price of the solution is high and not justifiable for small or medium-sized companies without a developed cybersecurity team.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The price of the solution could be lower. Companies utilizing this solution should have a well-developed cybersecurity team to maximize its benefits. It is more suited for large organizations rathe...
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
825,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.