No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

CRITICALSTART vs ServiceNow Security Operations comparison

Sponsored
 

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
6.9
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (2nd), AI-Powered Security Automation (2nd)
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 (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.7%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Security Operations is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Torq3.7%
ServiceNow Security Operations3.6%
CRITICALSTART1.1%
Other91.6%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

Nimrod Vardi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
Kalyan Kothali - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Torq has helped a lot regarding SOC analyst efficiency."
"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."
"Any request that comes in, regardless of how complex it is, I can accomplish it with Torq."
"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."
"Torq's unified platform approach to AI, SOAR, automation, and case management is superior compared to my experience managing multiple point solutions."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"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."
"After a year of using the service, our expectations have been met in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec."
"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 biggest lesson is transitioning from alert overload to being at a point where we do have eyes on alerts, where every alert is truly possible."
"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."
"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."
"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 most valuable features are service management and case management, and ServiceNow Security Operations also takes care of problem management as well as GRC, governance, risk, and compliance, enabling it to provide risk assessment."
"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."
"ServiceNow Security Operations has helped me in getting more precise results."
"ServiceNow Security Operations also takes care of GRC, governance, risk and compliance, enabling it to provide risk assessment."
"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 should be mandatory for any organization to maintain data."
"I will recommend it to others as it is an enterprise application used by large companies for ticketing purposes."
"This product is a good value for the money."
 

Cons

"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"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."
"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."
"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"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."
"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)."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now."
"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."
"There are limitations for the third-parties that are providing the inputs. They should increase the robustness of the solution."
"The threat intelligence module needs a better dashboard."
"The solution needs to make customization easier. You cannot do much customization immediately. It requires an extensive workload."
"An area for improvement I observed in ServiceNow Security Operations is the need to maintain correct CMDB data because if you're unable to do this, you can't perfectly maintain the vulnerability data."
"We'd like customization to be easier in terms of the UI and using the dashboards."
"I would rate technical support for ServiceNow Security Operations as a six out of ten in terms of faster resolution."
"There are limitations for the third-parties that are providing the inputs. They should increase the robustness of the solution."
"A one-year delay from their go-live date is a bit too long."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The product is more expensive than other solutions."
"The solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"This product is a good value for the money."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions are best for your needs.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise5
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?
To improve alert handling capability, there are ready-to-use playbooks available, but there are very few. Torq should...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
Torq is primarily used for security operations, mainly for the SOC team. I develop use cases based on requirements fr...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
The maintenance side is very good because we are using the product to reduce activities. For instance, sometimes ther...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: April 2026.
896,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.