CRITICALSTART vs ServiceNow Security Operations comparison

Critical Start and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category. Critical Start is ranked #26, while ServiceNow is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.1. Critical Start holds a 0.8% mindshare in SOAR, compared to ServiceNow’s 3.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Critical Start users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

ServiceNow Security Operations and CRITICALSTART operate in the security management space. ServiceNow excels in integration and workflow automation, while CRITICALSTART is superior in threat detection and response.

Features: ServiceNow Security Operations is highly regarded for seamless IT integration, intuitive workflow automation, and efficient incident response solutions. CRITICALSTART stands out with real-time threat detection, a robust managed detection and response system, and superior customer service support.

Room for Improvement: ServiceNow could enhance user interface simplicity, expand real-time capabilities, and reduce initial setup complexity. CRITICALSTART may improve broader integration options, UI speed for quicker navigation, and further customize mobile app functionality.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ServiceNow Security Operations offers flexible deployment with comprehensive support, thanks to extensive documentation and a wide partner network. CRITICALSTART simplifies deployments with personalized onboarding focused on security needs and is known for responsive, customized service.

Pricing and ROI: ServiceNow Security Operations typically requires a higher initial investment due to extensive integration features but offers considerable ROI through workflow automation. CRITICALSTART provides cost-effective pricing aimed at rapid time-to-value, delivering potential quicker ROI in security-focused environments.

To learn more, read our detailed CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations

February 2026

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 4.5%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Security Operations is 3.4%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Torq	4.5%
ServiceNow Security Operations	3.4%
CRITICALSTART	0.8%
Other	91.3%

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

Featured Reviews

Nimrod Vardi

Global IT Director at OpenWeb

Automation workflows have transformed our IT, enabling secure just-in-time access control

We work with them quite often, so we have a direct line regarding areas in Torq that have room for improvement. If we have a feature request, we can request it. I do not have anything in mind at the moment. We were a design partner for a short while, so we feel that they listen and that users of the system have an impact on the way the system is designed for the better. They have a new community, which is something that I personally suggested years ago. There are many people like me in different places and they might have already built the workflow that I need. Having the option to share workflows or to jump on a thread and say I have this need, did anyone ever build a workflow for it, is amazing. Someone would jump in and say yes, sure, here, take this workflow. I think this is an amazing thing and I really hope that the community will come alive because I think this is really powerful. This is something that I already suggested and it did happen eventually, and I am quite happy with it. I do not have any specific feature in mind that I have a need for at the moment.

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Justin Hadley

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.

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Kalyan Kothali

Associate Vice President at Wissen infotech

Effectively manages vulnerabilities and reduces false positives

ServiceNow Security Operations provides significant control over vulnerabilities, allowing users to mark false alarms as false positives and ignore them, which is important because many vulnerabilities are not real but appear as such. There are many aspects that we could handle. For certain vulnerabilities, remediation requires spending extra on hardware or OS upgrades, or purchasing new versions, which implies a cost. For that reason, we can take an exception for a couple of months or days, and once that exception expires, that vulnerability automatically reappears. These features help us ensure that everything is under control, and when we discuss vulnerabilities, we can consolidate them into one central category, which means working on one vulnerability automatically resolves the rest, making it efficient with the features provided.

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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

"Any request that comes in, regardless of how complex it is, I can accomplish it with Torq."

"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."

"Once I started to use the system and I saw the potential, it changed all of our work in IT."

"Using that one piece of AI, we auto-closed 511 cases in quarter four alone."

"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."

"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More CRITICALSTART pros

"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."

"Multiple projects use the ServiceNow tool because it is a low-cost and open-source tool."

"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."

"ServiceNow Security Operations also takes care of GRC, governance, risk and compliance, enabling it to provide risk assessment."

"We refer to the setup and installation guide provided by ServiceNow. They have good documentation, which makes it easier to handle the process."

"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."

"The SOAR module of ServiceNow Security Operations is the most valuable feature"

"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."

More ServiceNow Security Operations pros

Cons

"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."

"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."

"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."

"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More CRITICALSTART cons

"The product is called SecOps, but it is not security operations in terms of SIEM solutions."

"Customer awareness and understanding of ServiceNow's SecOps capabilities could be improved."

"It is challenging for the customers to understand the processes for SecOps. It needs to be simplified."

"Process framework and best practices for ease of integration between IT and security teams via incident, problem, and change."

"We'd like customization to be easier in terms of the UI and using the dashboards."

"It doesn't interact with things very well."

"The solution needs to make customization easier. You cannot do much customization immediately. It requires an extensive workload. If the customization process was user-friendly, it would be much better."

"Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time. Additionally, there are occasional issues when raising a ticket, which can also consume time."

More ServiceNow Security Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Compared to competitor tools, ServiceNow Security Operations is more affordable"

"This product is a good value for the money."

"It is an expensive product."

"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."

"The solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

12%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?

We do not utilize the AI features that much. When it comes to general AI features of Torq, we are just slowly startin...

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What is your primary use case for Torq?

Torq markets itself as a security tool, and we do use them for security, but not in the traditional sense they market...

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What advice do you have for others considering Torq?

I would rate Torq an eight overall. I feel that Torq is as good as the effort you put into it. The limitations are ve...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Security Operations?

It is relatively expensive but manageable.

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What needs improvement with ServiceNow Security Operations?

ServiceNow Security Operations is not specifically a vulnerability management or incident tool, but rather a data agg...

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What advice do you have for others considering ServiceNow Security Operations?

Initially, acquire basic knowledge about the system and understand how ServiceNow Security Operations operates with o...

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Comparisons

Tines vs Torq

Compared 43% of the time

Splunk SOAR vs Torq

Compared 14% of the time

Blink Ops vs Torq

Compared 12% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs Torq

Compared 10% of the time

Swimlane vs Torq

Compared 7% of the time

More Torq Competitors

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 11% of the time

Red Canary vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 11% of the time

Expel vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 8% of the time

ReliaQuest GreyMatter vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 8% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 7% of the time

More CRITICALSTART Competitors

Splunk SOAR vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 14% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 14% of the time

Tines vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Sentinel vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 5% of the time

Google Security Operations vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 3% of the time

More ServiceNow Security Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Torq

January 2026

Download Torq product report

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

February 2026

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Security Operations

January 2026

Download ServiceNow Security Operations product report

Also Known As

No data available

Critical Start, CriticalStart

No data available

Overview

Torq is the enterprise AI SOC solution that effectively combines adaptive insights and automation to handle critical threats efficiently. It manages threat lifecycles, swiftly moving from triage to response, ensuring effective risk management.

Torq is designed to streamline security operations by aggregating telemetry across your security stack. It investigates significant risks and manages threats from triage to containment and remediation. This AI-driven tool enhances the capabilities of your SecOps team, allowing them to achieve more impactful results without introducing complicated processes.

What are the key features of Torq?

Adaptive Agentic Insights: Provides real-time threat intelligence tailored to specific security challenges.
Automation: Automates responses to security incidents, minimizing manual intervention requirements.
Threat Lifecycle Management: Comprehensive handling of threats from detection to remediation.
Telemetry Aggregation: Integrates data across platforms for a unified security overview.

Why consider Torq based on reviews?

Efficiency: Users notice significant reductions in time spent managing threats.
Risk Reduction: Enhanced ability to identify and address critical threats promptly.
Resource Optimization: Allows teams to allocate effort to other critical tasks by reducing manual security operations.
Scalability: Adaptable to meet the demands of growing or changing infrastructures.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Torq shows effectiveness by adapting to specific risk scenarios often encountered in these fields. Its integration with existing infrastructures makes it a valuable asset for maintaining stringent security standards, essential for protecting critical data and operations in diverse high-stakes environments.

Torq

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.

Critical Start

ServiceNow Security Operations is a cutting-edge security solution designed to elevate organizations' security incident response (SIR) processes through automation and orchestration. Going beyond traditional SOAR, this comprehensive Security Operations Suite integrates seamlessly with other ServiceNow products and offers a wide array of features. Its components include Security Incident Response (SIR), which automates incident workflows and offers pre-built playbooks; Security Configuration Compliance (SCC), continuously scanning and automating compliance tasks; Vulnerability Response (VR), prioritizing and remediating vulnerabilities; Threat Intelligence (TI), aggregating threat data for proactive threat hunting; and additional features like IT Service Management integration, Machine Learning and AI, reporting, and a mobile app. The benefits span improved incident response speed, reduced mean time to resolution, increased security posture, enhanced compliance, collaborative synergy between security and IT teams, and operational cost reductions.

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

DXC Technology, Freedom Security Alliance, Prime Therapeutics, Seton Hall University, York Risk Services

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations

February 2026

Free Report: CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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