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CRITICALSTART vs ServiceNow Security Operations 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:
 

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) (31st)
ServiceNow Security Operations
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (2nd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Security Operations is 3.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

PB
Saves my team time and alert fatigue, allowing us to concentrate on more important things
The Trusted Behavior Registry helps resolve alerts in the sense that CRITICALSTART is doing a lot of that initial triage for me. Out of a given 500,000 events and alerts, for example, that come through, they're taking out 495,000 of them. That only leaves me with a subset of that to actually have to triage, and that's where it benefits us. They take care of Tier-1 and Tier-2 triage. And 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. Also, the intuitiveness of the updated user interface for the service is spot-on. It is much easier to navigate, and know where to navigate, in the newer interface. I've never had an issue with responsiveness. It's very quick and doesn't sit there and chug on anything. It's fast, it's efficient. It has enabled our SecOps team to take action faster because if you have multiple ways of connecting to it and actually getting your alerts answered and taking care of things fast, it is extremely helpful. All the information that you need to make a determination is usually in the alert itself that comes through the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP). I don't find myself going back to the app itself very often. That still happens, but not as often. The ability to flow the information forward, from the alert standpoint, helps me because it saves me from running back to get the information. It's improved my efficiency. Finally, there haven't been any data sources that the service wasn't able to integrate with.
KishoreKumar4 - PeerSpot reviewer
A low-cost and open-source tool for incident and change management
If we encounter challenges while deploying, we raise incidents. These incidents are categorized by priority: high, medium, and low. We assign an incident number and notify the relevant teams to address the issue. For instance, if we experience a problem with Cloud services or any other issue, we…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Customer service and their response are phenomenal. I would give their customer support a nine point five (out of 10). Our easy access to their SOC analyst, sales team, and leadership team instills confidence in me that they are there for us 24/7."
"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 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."
"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 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."
"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 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."
"The most valuable aspect of working with ServiceNow is its meaningful and feature-rich product."
"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."
"It has helped optimize security costs by consolidating multiple tools into one platform."
"What I found most valuable in ServiceNow Security Operations is that it's very useful for any incoming vulnerability. For example, if my team finds any vulnerability on servers such as the CA and CMDB integrated with ServiceNow Security Operations, my team can make some changes. My team can map the vulnerabilities found on the CA server, make the changes required, and resolve the vulnerabilities before the system is attacked. You can avoid vulnerability attacks through ServiceNow Security Operations, so this is the best feature of the solution. ServiceNow Security Operations is beneficial mainly for vulnerability response and engagement purposes."
"The "follow" feature is really good. If the user is not responding, there's an option to "follow". Just click on the button, and it will automatically trigger an email to the end user."
"Reduces time to closure and closure metrics for vulnerabilities."
"The SOAR module of ServiceNow Security Operations is the most valuable feature"
"ServiceNow is a convenient platform to raise tickets, and the respective support team will contact us to resolve any issues."
 

Cons

"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."
"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..."
"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 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."
"Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time. Additionally, there are occasional issues when raising a ticket, which can also consume time."
"Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time."
"Customer awareness and understanding of ServiceNow's SecOps capabilities could be improved."
"It's very slow. When you click a button or update a field, it takes forever to actually react."
"One area for improvement for the product is the need to tailor and alter some codes for customization, which can cause issues during upgrades. It does not support customized operations."
"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."
"It doesn't interact with things very well."
"It is challenging for the customers to understand the processes for SecOps. It needs to be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."
"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"
"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."
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about ServiceNow Security Operations?
The most valuable aspect of working with ServiceNow is its meaningful and feature-rich product.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Security Operations?
The product is more expensive than other solutions like Archer but offers more features, making the pricing justifiable.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Security Operations?
Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time. Additionally, there are occasional issues when raising a ticket, which can also consume time.
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.