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Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Arctic Wolf Managed Detecti...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
5th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (1st)
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
33rd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response is 9.0%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Kimberly Brock - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time threat detection has improved with comprehensive asset scanning
The threat intelligence feature is expected to be a significant advantage. However, a section for software inventory and real-time comparison with current CVEs would be beneficial. One can review an inventory of assets being scanned, including a software inventory along with CVE updates based on a company's software subscriptions, would be a game changer.
JH
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration between Cisco AMPs and the Windows servers is most valuable. So, they can also sandbox machines on which they see something suspicious."
"The solution works well for our team as it offers a hands-off approach, which we need."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its ease of implementation."
"The visibility into our endpoints is huge."
"Arctic Wolf is laser-focused on providing top-notch customer service."
"The agents give pretty good visibility into what is happening at the endpoint."
"Security protection is the best feature of this product."
"I highly recommend Arctic Wolf as they excel in ensuring the company is well-trained and updated on industry developments."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
 

Cons

"While they do inventory assets, including software inventory and CVE updates based on software subscriptions, would be a major improvement."
"While it isn't a regular occurrence, there have been some gaps in response to some support questions. Questions get answered, yet there are times it takes longer than I'm comfortable with."
"I would like to see them build the ability to co-sell an EDR platform, manage an EDR or manage the actual response, potentially from the issues that are coming up from the security risks."
"It can sometimes take up to an hour to get notification of a problem and that's a long time."
"They focus on detecting administrator-level control compromises. Because they're focusing more on administrator-level compromise, they are less able to see if an individual user has been compromised. It is, admittedly, very difficult because they don't know what normal human behavior is. If a hacker compromises a human account and then acts just like the human, how are you ever going to notice, unless you have some inside knowledge of how the company works? For example, they overlook account lockouts on user accounts, whereas in our own alerting system, we do not. We review every account lockout, and if it is bad, we contact the person, whereas they think of that as noise because they're more focused on the administrator-level compromise."
"I have heard that the tool doesn't go right to the endpoints."
"In the future, I would like to see a summary report."
"While they do inventory assets, including software inventory and CVE updates based on software subscriptions, would be a major improvement."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"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..."
"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 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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
"It is more expensive than CrowdStrike, but it also has more features. I don't remember the amount, but I do remember that it was on the higher side. I believe we have five sensors, and the sensors have a yearly cost. We don't have any additional costs, but I know that if we have more features, they will add to the cost."
"The pricing is fair."
"The pricing is pretty competitive."
"I find their pricing to be reasonable and competitive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Healthcare Company
13%
Real Estate/Law Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response?
The agents give pretty good visibility into what is happening at the endpoint.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response?
The pricing is okay and comparable to other solutions, with competitive pricing obtained for most options. We value the ease of use and hands-off approach.
What needs improvement with Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response?
The only frustrating aspect is the lack of support for Windows on ARM devices. We cannot fully secure these devices until they release an updated version of their agent software.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Arctic Wolf AWN CyberSOC
Critical Start, CriticalStart
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Agero, Madison Memorial Hospital, DLZ, Howard LLP, City of Sparks
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Find out what your peers are saying about Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs. CRITICALSTART and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
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