CRITICALSTART vs ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR comparison

Critical Start and ThreatLocker are both solutions in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category. Critical Start is ranked #32, while ThreatLocker is ranked #12 with an average rating of 9.1. Critical Start holds a 0.8% mindshare in MDR, compared to ThreatLocker’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Critical Start users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ThreatLocker users who would recommend it.

CRITICALSTART

Read 10 CRITICALSTART reviews

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100% willing to recommend

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

Read 8 ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR reviews

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94 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CRITICALSTART

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 23, 2025

CRITICALSTART and ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR are significant players in the cybersecurity sector, both offering managed detection and response solutions. Based on our comparison, ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR has an edge due to its extensive security features, though CRITICALSTART is noted for better support and pricing.

Features: CRITICALSTART offers automated threat detection, alert reduction, and a mobile app for alerts management. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR stands out with application whitelisting, zero-trust environment support, and endpoint protection, making it a comprehensive security suite.

Room for Improvement: CRITICALSTART could enhance its user interface speed, integrate more data sources, and improve the intuitiveness of new features. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR might streamline its deployment process, improve documentation for ease of use, and offer a more flexible pricing model.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CRITICALSTART has a smooth deployment experience with proactive support. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR involves a more complex setup due to its rich feature set, but it compensates with dedicated customer support that simplifies the integration process.

Pricing and ROI: CRITICALSTART is praised for its competitive pricing and quick ROI. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR, while requiring a larger initial investment, offers extensive features that lead to significant long-term ROI. CRITICALSTART is favored for budget considerations, while ThreatLocker's superior capabilities justify its higher cost.

To learn more, read our detailed CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

March 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

CRITICALSTART

Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

32nd

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (31st)

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

12th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Featured Reviews

Preston Broesche

Director of Information Technology at Kirby Corporation

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.

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Andres Plaza

President & Chief Executive Officer at OneconnectionIT

Enables granular control through Ringfencing and works seamlessly for us as an MSP

The most valuable feature is ringfencing. It enables us to only allow what needs to be allowed into the environment and keep out anything else. It permits applications to perform without accessing anything they are not supposed to. For instance, if an application tries to utilize the command prompt unnecessarily, it blocks this action while still allowing users to operate the application. Being able to let the user or the customer continue to use that application but block the application from using the command prompt because it is not necessary is great. Being able to inform customers about enhanced security from a zero-trust standpoint has significantly improved our sales. We are able to walk up to a customer or call a new prospect and let them know that we are going to keep them secure at a level that they have not seen before. We are able to explain to them how cybersecurity works through it.

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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

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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

"There is a tremendous amount that is helpful, such as their recording, watching the systems, locking down the systems, and their training."

"ThreatLocker is worth every penny and a couple more."

"I did a detailed search for two years, and ThreatLocker Zero Trust is the only one that does what it says it can do."

"The ability to isolate the device when something is happening and the network access control element are valuable features."

"The most valuable feature is ringfencing. It enables us to only allow what needs to be allowed into the environment and keep out anything else. It permits applications to perform without accessing anything they are not supposed to."

"Our customers now have the confidence that they can work without being impeded, losing access or getting compromised."

"We stopped two attacks so far."

"Our clients feel a bit more secure when using their equipment now, and they can feel confident that we have their backs kind of when they're when they either get compromised."

More ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR pros

Cons

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

"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."

"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). 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."

"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 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."

More CRITICALSTART cons

"As far as an improvement regarding ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR, there are still some things that, out of the box, it would be nice to have a more fine-grained ability to create certain exclusions."

"We have not used it for long enough, but there are some things users have asked for, such as integration with other platforms for reporting. They want a single glass location to use all the tools."

"Pricing is a bit high, with a minimum of 50 devices. Lowering that for small companies would be great."

"It would be great if they handled patch management, and I am aware that they are currently working on it."

"We have seen a couple of approval requests come through where if the user types in a reason for why they need it, they'll get approved based on the reason versus the application that are actually required."

"The ultimate, most amazing solution in the market could be less pricey and more transparent."

"From an MDR perspective, the solution can have the ability to ingest logs from other sources, such as M365, firewalls, external sources, and even cloud SaaS-based platforms. This way, we can obtain a holistic picture."

"The Cyber Hero Support is not as effective as it is portrayed. There is a lot of miscommunication in notes, which are very buried and not easy to find."

More ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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 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 is not so bad. My clients do not like it, but they are following our pricing."

"ThreatLocker is worth every penny and a couple more."

"It has been excellent."

"It is pretty good. We would have been one of the biggest partners in Ireland, so we got pretty good pricing at the start, and it is still competitive. Pricing depends on what we are up against."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Healthcare Company

11%

Real Estate/Law Firm

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

It has been excellent.

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What needs improvement with ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

As far as an improvement regarding ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR, there are still some things that, out of the box, it would be nice to have a more fine-grained ability to create certain exclusions. ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

I'm one of the managers and cofounders at my company, and one of my focuses for our clients is in security and implementing security in such a way that we have the control necessary to be able to t...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

April 2025

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

March 2025

Download ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR product report

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart

No data available

Overview

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

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR provides advanced threat detection and response capabilities, designed to enhance cybersecurity defenses for businesses.

Designed for efficient threat management, ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR offers a comprehensive suite tailored to meet cybersecurity demands. Its robust architecture supercharges security operations, protecting against sophisticated threats with precision and reliability. Automation in threat management and response streamlines processes and enhances protection efficiency. This solution is widely recognized for its adaptability to various cybersecurity landscapes.

What are the solution's most important features?

Advanced Threat Detection: Identifies complex and emerging threats to ensure high-level protection.
Automated Response: Rapidly addresses threats to minimize potential impact.
Customizable Policies: Tailors security measures to specific business requirements.
Comprehensive Reporting: Offers detailed insights into threat landscapes.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Improved Security Efficiency: Streamlines threat detection and response activities.
Enhanced Threat Intelligence: Offers valuable insights to strengthen defenses.
Cost-Effectiveness: Reduces the need for frequent manual interventions.
Scalability: Adapts to growing security demands.

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR finds effective use in industries requiring high-level security measures, including finance and healthcare. Its implementation involves integrating with existing infrastructure to offer seamless threat management, with a focus on protecting sensitive data and ensuring compliance with industry standards.

ThreatLocker

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

March 2025

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