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CRITICALSTART vs Red Canary comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Binary Defense MDR
Sponsored
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
32nd
Average Rating
9.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (29th)
Red Canary
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
11th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (15th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (25th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (46th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (15th)
 

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 Red Canary is 4.7%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Rich Ullom - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
BF
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.
Sagar Shekhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 31, 2023
An open-source tool that offers great automation capabilities
My company uses Red Canary MDR to simulate MITRE ATT&CK, like spearphishing and updating domain names The most valuable feature of the solution is its automation part. If we have to perform MITRE ATT&CK, we have to do it step by step, wherein we have to run all the commands, while Red Canary MDR…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The case interface is Binary Defense MDR's most valuable feature."
"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 most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians."
"Binary Defense has a human service department that provides live monitoring for our systems."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 the solution is its automation part."
"The solution works well for what we use it for and the support and protection are good."
"The near real-time review translates into near real-time action. So, in addition to alerting, Red Canary MDR has response playbooks built out."
"The valuable features of this solution are it integrates well with different EDR software, such CrowdStrike, and Carbon Black, and the information it provides is helpful."
 

Cons

"The only area I see for improvement with Binary Defense is their service portal. It could benefit from some enhancements."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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..."
"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."
"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."
"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 UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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 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 general, the solution currently fails to provide a summary to its users."
"The price could always be better."
"The most valuable feature of Red Canary MDR is the overall threat protection it provides."
"I would like there to be an on-premise version of this solution for our data centers because of the proliferation of online threats."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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 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 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."
"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 very good. They are definitely competitive and they were lower at the time that we went with them."
"Binary Defense MDR is priced competitively and may be slightly lower than CrowdStrike."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"Red Canary MDR I use is an open-source tool."
"I have not compared Red Canary to other solutions to know if the price is high or low. However, I have found the price of this solution fair and reasonable, it cost approximately $100 per year, per device. If they could provide the solution for $50 per year, per device, it would be better."
"The solution could vary in price depending on how many endpoints a company has."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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.
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...
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 Red Canary MDR?
The most valuable feature of the solution is its automation part.
What needs improvement with Red Canary MDR?
Red Canary MDR generates a lot of output, so it would be good if, in the end, it generates a summary of all the previ...
 

Also Known As

Binary Defense Vision, Binary Defense Managed Detection and Response, Binary Defense Managed Detection & Response
Critical Start, CriticalStart
Red Canary Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Overview

 

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
DuPont, Quanta Services, Microchip Technology, Hopkins Public Schools, Henny Penny, Schumacher Homes
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Red Canary and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.