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CRITICALSTART vs ServiceNow Security Operations comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Torq
Sponsored
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (1st), AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
26th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (30th)
ServiceNow Security Operations
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (1st), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.8%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Security Operations is 3.5%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Torq3.8%
ServiceNow Security Operations3.5%
CRITICALSTART1.2%
Other91.5%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

AD
Solutions Architect at Swimlane
Automation has streamlined multi-tenant SOC workflows and improves alert handling efficiency
Although the reporting within Torq is not that great, we did ask for many features regarding reporting in Torq, but due to some platform constraints, they could not make the whole dataset available for us to be used in reporting. Except for that, we used some basic reporting. When I used Torq, it was indeed in the early stages of AI capabilities. Only a few customers were allowed to use it, and we were among them. It functioned well as long as we summarized the data properly. If you input garbage, you would get garbage out. Thus, we had to do significant fine-tuning regarding what data context we provided to the AI orchestrator to get meaningful results. In terms of Torq's unified platform approach to AI SOC automation and case management compared to managing multiple point solutions across my security stack, I find it case-centric. The unified view in case management is good since it provides clarity, although there are limitations regarding how many items in case management can be modified at once. Bulk operations are very limited, potentially due to their back-end database or data retrieval processes that can be improved. Regarding improvements for Torq, when we were onboarded, there were aspects we were uncertain about, such as the number of cases that could be generated, what data we could bring in, how many clients we could onboard, and similar concerns. Initially, we also lacked clarity about the number of playbooks or workflows we could build. Different triggers like system triggers, case-based triggers, and others can be employed without restrictions, but when it comes to on-demand and scheduled jobs, there is a limitation based on the subscription and pricing tier that notably caps the number of workflows we can create. No bulk editing across cases was one issue, along with limited filtering related to single grouping constraints. Additionally, the out-of-the-box case templates provided require substantial modifications before they become usable. There is also a feature in the cases for notes that cannot be searched. They are only visible through the UI, which is another area for improvement. The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially. I am not sure if new customers are made aware of this. It seems that workflows revolving around cases hinder functionality outside of case management, as we have many use cases needing on-demand triggers and schedules for functions like reporting or polling devices. Creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers. While they facilitate optimization and scaling, the support received tends to be very basic. Improvements can be made in that area as well.
JH
Sr. Manager, Security Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
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.
Suhel Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant (Siem Admin) at IBM
Precise incident handling has improved reporting and searching across complex security cases
I would like to see new features added, particularly regarding the incident upgrading part. For instance, if you have an instance and need to transfer it to a particular team, being able to show that the status is still in progress, which is currently in a beta version, would definitely help people to understand that the status has changed for the incident.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"If I review about 100 vendors that I might work with, Torq is definitely in the top five that gave me personally investment back, just because every bit of effort I put into Torq eventually became a workflow that gave it back to me."
"Almost four or five hours of work is now completed in four or five minutes."
"Torq has exceeded expectations by delivering workflows in a timely and lower effort manner than XSOAR, and it meets all my needs while saving a ton of time and targeting $600,000 saved this year, which is a substantial amount of money."
"Using that one piece of AI, we auto-closed 511 cases in quarter four alone."
"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"Since we started working with Torq, I am handling much fewer alerts, it is becoming really easy for me to handle an alert, I have all the information that I need, I do not need to connect to different vendors to receive this information, and the main thing I got from Torq is time, which now helps me to build another automated system and learn."
"Under one SOC tool in Torq, analysts get to know everything within the context of an alert or incident they are working on, and this ability to view the whole picture within Torq is one of the major breakthroughs and best offerings of Torq."
"CRITICALSTART makes us much more comfortable with knowing someone else is watching our data and our systems and knowing that professional security people are taking a look at any issues that do arise."
"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."
"In a given quarter, I get 589,000 security events and 584,000 of those get reduced by the service before they even get to me, so the alerts that actually come through to me end up being about 1,400 in that quarter, which is a 99.7 percent efficiency rate."
"When I start thinking about if I were to try to light up a SOC, which I've done before and I have no interest in doing, it could be a million dollars a year or more to do that, and for what I am paying them for the managed fees, it's a steal."
"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."
"We are absolutely seeing return on our investment from CRITICALSTART's services, as they're doing the job of a 24/7 SOC at a fraction of the price that it would cost me to run it myself."
"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."
"Out of all the service providers I've had to work with over the years—I've been here six years—CRITICALSTART is my favorite to work with."
"It streamlines processes; it collects data, takes that data and turns it into information, and allows you to manage through dashboards and work lists, improving every facet of the overall process."
"Reduces time to closure and closure metrics for vulnerabilities."
"The product has a very simple UI, I like the look and feel, and I find it very easy to navigate."
"The product has a very simple UI."
"​Integration to other security tools allows for a consolidated view of all vulnerabilities, incidents, etc. for all sorts of leverage in a single platform to assess governance risk and compliance as well as an enhanced, enriched intelligence.​"
"It gives you the ability to bring data into the system. The workflows are out of the box, and it gives you the ability to auto-assign the incidents based on criteria and vulnerabilities."
"ServiceNow Security Operations collects data from various sources and presents it in a single, respectable format for assessment and action, providing a unified user experience where all work and fixes can be managed from one location."
"ServiceNow Security Operations has helped me in getting more precise results."
 

Cons

"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."
"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."
"It was able to capture data but was unable to differentiate between the agent hostname we are using and the hostname that resides on the back end of the Internet."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially, and creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers."
"Additionally, the documentation for Torq is not very clear. Most of the information is presented in videos, which are not ideal for reading; there are mostly paragraphs and other text-based content."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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 costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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 and I hate it."
"The dashboard and playbook creation will need to improve"
"The threat intelligence module needs a better dashboard."
"The initial setup is difficult."
"Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time."
"Visibility and transitions between teams present significant challenges in the SecOps space, indicating that substantial training and hand-holding are required to improve usability, which is one observation I have had."
"There are limitations for the third-parties that are providing the inputs. They should increase the robustness of the solution."
"Customer awareness and understanding of ServiceNow's SecOps capabilities could be improved."
"They should stick to the roadmap and continue to build plugins and integrations with other third parties, enhance the UI, and enhance the reporting. It's all good. They should just continue enhancing the releases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."
"If you're going to implement it on your own, there would be internal costs. If you're going to implement it through a contractor or consultant, you have to pay for that."
"The product is more expensive than other solutions."
"This product is a good value for the money."
"Compared to competitor tools, ServiceNow Security Operations is more affordable"
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
I do not dislike anything about Torq because it has satisfied all of our use cases and requirements. We contacted sup...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
Initially, we were using Slack for small automations, such as creating pipelines or shutting down servers. For exampl...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
I have been working for five years with experience in the IT field. Torq is very good. It manages everything. I would...
Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Security Operations?
In my opinion, the pricing is quite affordable considering the features, and I do not find it expensive. I would not ...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Security Operations?
I would like to see new features added, particularly regarding the incident upgrading part. For instance, if you have...
What advice do you have for others considering ServiceNow Security Operations?
For someone looking to use ServiceNow Security Operations, I recommend that they read about the documentation and spe...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
DXC Technology, Freedom Security Alliance, Prime Therapeutics, Seton Hall University, York Risk Services
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.