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 #27, while ServiceNow is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. Critical Start holds a 0.6% mindshare in SOAR, compared to ServiceNow’s 3.5% 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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations

December 2025

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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 January 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 4.9%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Security Operations is 3.5%, down from 3.9% 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 (%)
ServiceNow Security Operations	3.5%
Torq	4.9%
CRITICALSTART	0.6%
Other	91.0%

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2767650

Senior Consultant at a university with 10,001+ employees

Have found automation to save analyst time but miss more accurate data classification

From our research and testing with the tool, we determined there need to be modifications and changes to train the LLM on the back end. 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. It was unable to do that sort of classification. We concluded this tool would be more suitable for initial ticket management rather than security automation. Regarding data handling, I would give preference to Torq. For case management, Cortex and its dashboards prove more useful. Cortex and Palo's solutions do not have as much capability as Torq provides with the same tools. However, Torq's dashboards could be improved, especially on the case management side.

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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

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

"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 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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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."

"The ease of use is great."

"I will recommend it to others as it is an enterprise application used by large companies for ticketing purposes."

"Reduces time to closure and closure metrics for vulnerabilities."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More ServiceNow Security Operations pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"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 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."

"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."

"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 UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."

More CRITICALSTART cons

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

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

"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."

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

"The dashboard and playbook creation will need to improve"

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

"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."

"The threat intelligence module needs a better dashboard."

More ServiceNow Security Operations cons

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."

"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It is an expensive product."

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

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

"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

15%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

From our research and testing with the tool, we determined there need to be modifications and changes to train the LL...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Torq?

I used Torq for conducting one of the proof of evaluations for a vendor we are connected with. I am currently working...

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What advice do you have for others considering Torq?

One of our members uses AWS, and we receive their feed. This involves triaging AWS-related logs. While I do not have ...

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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 50% 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

Red Canary vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 15% of the time

ReliaQuest GreyMatter vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 12% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 11% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 11% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR vs CRITICALSTART

Compared 9% of the time

More CRITICALSTART Competitors

Splunk SOAR vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 18% 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 6% of the time

Google Security Operations vs ServiceNow Security Operations

Compared 4% of the time

More ServiceNow Security Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

December 2025

Download Torq product report

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

January 2026

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Security Operations

December 2025

Download ServiceNow Security Operations product report

Also Known As

No data available

Critical Start, CriticalStart

No data available

Overview

Torq provides advanced automation capabilities, enabling organizations to streamline operations and enhance efficiency. It's designed to address complex workflows, reducing manual efforts and improving productivity.

Leveraging automation, Torq assists companies in managing intricate processes with agility and precision, making it indispensable for those seeking to optimize their workflows. Its robust platform integrates smoothly into current infrastructures, minimizing disruptions while enhancing operational capacities.

What are Torq's standout features?

Automation Workflows: Streamlines repetitive tasks to enhance efficiency.
Seamless Integration: Connects with existing systems effortlessly.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business demands efficiently.

What benefits should you look for in reviews?

Productivity Gains: Significant improvement in task completion rates.
Cost Reduction: Decreases manual labor costs through automation.
Enhanced Collaboration: Facilitates better communication among teams.

Torq's capabilities are especially beneficial in industries like finance and healthcare where intricate workflows and compliance requirements are common. Automation in these sectors supports better data management and regulatory adherence, providing a decisive edge in operational efficiency.

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

December 2025

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