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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
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 June 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.8%, down from 5.5% 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 3.7% 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.
SH
Freelancer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Gaining unified control over vulnerabilities has improved governance but pricing and support need work
The market price is slightly high. The pricing should be a little lower because this is a SaaS-based product. Everyone using ServiceNow might be getting many modules, but the overall module cost becomes high with license consumption one by one. I personally see that if ServiceNow is to grow over the next decade, they need to work on the pricing part. Cheap providers are emerging, and in the age of AI, it is evident that the chatbot and the virtual agent features, which are prominent features of ServiceNow, could be completely compromised and replaced by people choosing other tools. If ServiceNow develops a strategy to lower the price and increase the customer base, it could help ServiceNow to grow for another decade. I encountered one issue in ServiceNow Security Operations. The different tools, for example, Tenable and TVM, discovered vulnerabilities that had very limited information when imported. However, the same vulnerabilities from different sources, the TVM and Tenable, had shorter descriptions than what was present in the common vulnerabilities or CVE. If this depends on the implementer, such as Tenable or how other security operations implement them, the text was very limited. Customers were asking questions about why this was happening and if ServiceNow was working properly. The vulnerability information should be updated and the common text should be displayed every time, regardless of how many different tools are used for integration. The vulnerability database should be consistent when it comes to the description to avoid confusion for customers implementing it for the first time. This is an improvement that ServiceNow can make.

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."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"Torq's unified platform approach to AI, SOAR, automation, and case management is superior compared to my experience managing multiple point solutions."
"Almost four or five hours of work is now completed in four or five minutes."
"Once I started to use the system and I saw the potential, it changed all of our work in IT."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 is a comfort to know that there is a team of professionals backing you up, especially in an area that you don't feel 100 percent comfortable."
"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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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."
"Multiple projects use the ServiceNow tool because it is a low-cost and open-source tool."
"We refer to the setup and installation guide provided by ServiceNow. They have good documentation, which makes it easier to handle the process."
"ServiceNow Security Operations has helped me in getting more precise results."
"The solution is available over the cloud and is easy to manage."
"The product's most valuable features include the no-code capability for workflows and flow design, which makes it user-friendly, and the ability to perform advanced configurations."
"My favorite feature is the application vulnerability scanner."
"It has helped optimize security costs by consolidating multiple tools into one platform."
"When things are set up correctly it goes really smooth, however, it's getting there that takes time."
 

Cons

"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"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."
"I wish Torq's AI assistant for building templated workflows from scratch worked better; when you start with a blank slate, asking AI to help you build or template the workflow out does not go well."
"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."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"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."
"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."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The updated UI is actually pretty bad. Regarding the intuitiveness, it is fairly easy to use, but the responsiveness, on a scale of one to 10, is a one. It's really poor performance."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"A one-year delay from their go-live date is a bit too long."
"There is room for improvement in terms of developer support and documentation."
"Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time. Additionally, there are occasional issues when raising a ticket, which can also consume time."
"The dashboard and playbook creation will need to improve"
"​Process framework and best practices for ease of integration between IT and security teams via incident, problem, and change.​"
"It's very slow. When you click a button or update a field, it takes forever to actually react."
"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."
"We'd like customization to be easier in terms of the UI and using the dashboards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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 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 solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."
"This product is a good value for the money."
"The product is more expensive than other solutions."
"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."
"Compared to competitor tools, ServiceNow Security Operations is more affordable"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
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?
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.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.