Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs CRITICALSTART comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response and CRITICALSTART based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Arctic Wolf Networks, Huntress and others in Managed Detection and Response (MDR).
To learn more, read our detailed Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Report (Updated: April 2024).
768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The biggest aspect for us is that they are able to conform to our environment and utilize our tools. That way, we still maintain ownership of all the data and access to the applications, and we never lose control of the ability to run the solution ourselves if we need to.""Among the valuable features are the agent, continuous reporting, and dashboard. It has all the features we need and we haven't had to customize it, other than turning on certain features that we wanted.""The most valuable part of Binary Defense is its team of cybersecurity analysts. Their analysts filter out the noise and only forward the critical threats that require a response instead of false positives.""The most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians.""One of the main benefits of Binary Defense MDR is the ability to easily meet with their support team to discuss any issues we encounter.""The speed at which their services are reactive is valuable. Nowadays, when a threat hits an endpoint, you've got minutes, not hours or days. Their average response time is about four minutes on an alert. For anything that needs to be sent to us, it's about fourteen minutes, which is pretty good. They're the third SOC that I've used in fifteen years. By far, they are the quickest ones to act. When you're looking at prevention, that's a key factor.""The case interface is Binary Defense MDR's most valuable feature.""The most valuable features are the SIEM and the ticketing function; the latter is very smooth and easy to read and understand. We don't have any issues looking at the ticketing information when we're trying to identify what's going on."

More Binary Defense MDR Pros →

"The agents give pretty good visibility into what is happening at the endpoint.""They have a portal where you can evaluate and mitigate any vulnerabilities that you and your network might have.""Whenever there is a major thing like Exchange vulnerabilities, it scans our Exchange server for indicators of compromise. It then alerts us and points exactly where we need to go to check for ourselves if it is normal or not.""They provide useful quarterly updates.""Arctic Wolf is laser-focused on providing top-notch customer service.""The visibility into our endpoints is huge.""What's valuable about Arctic Wolf AWN CyberSOC is the cost savings it provides for companies that no longer have to hire a bunch of security people and pay for a SIM.""The integration between Cisco AMPs and the Windows servers is most valuable. So, they can also sandbox machines on which they see something suspicious."

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"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.""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.""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.""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 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 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.""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 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."

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Cons
"We should be able to isolate devices faster. They should shorten the time between clicking on a device to contain it and carrying out the action. That would be a welcome improvement.""We found that an earlier version of the agent had high memory usage and that was a bit concerning, but we raised the concern with their support team and they immediately replied that they had noticed the same thing and had a candidate fix already available... it totally fixed the issue.""If I were shopping for an MDR solution today, I would not only look for a company that has the ability to alert, detect, and remediate, but also the ability to integrate vulnerability management. That's a big thing that they're lacking today.""It's sometimes difficult to know when to engage Binary Defense or TrustedSec, their sister company. TrustedSec is more focused on offensive security, as opposed to the defensive security that the MDR solution provides. It would be awesome if there were a better bridge between that relationship for when we need to get more proactive services or when we need to do a penetration test.""The most significant area for improvement is in support for non-English speakers; we're a global organization, so many of our users are not English speakers, which can make interacting with them a challenge. There's no Chinese language support, so we must rely on what we can do with the internet. We don't expect Binary Defense to build a language staff, but details can get lost in translation when we assume the whole world speaks English.""The only area I see for improvement with Binary Defense is their service portal. It could benefit from some enhancements.""Binary Defense MDR could be even better with additional features, like automatic scans and file quarantine.""The current reporting system could benefit from improvement."

More Binary Defense MDR Cons →

"It can sometimes take up to an hour to get notification of a problem and that's a long time.""We get a lot of false alarms, but that's because they don't know our network in detail. I think that could be alleviated if we told them more about our network so they could create rules to skip some of those things.""In the future, I would like to see a summary report.""They could probably expand on their integration tools. They can integrate with more security tools.""The implementation process could be a little more streamlined.""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 actually be interested in having fewer features at a lower price.""It's nitpicky; however, if it could integrate with more of our products, like our CRM, that would be ideal. They may only integrate with Salesforce. We use a different mid-market CRM."

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"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 UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on.""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.""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.""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.""There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The solution's price is spot on; if anything, it's slightly below the norm for most services. Compared to building the same team internally, it would cost more to create the same amount of capability than what we get from an external team. Price-wise, Binary Defense is in a great spot."
  • "From the initial cost that Binary Defense came in with, we pared it down quite a bit over the course of 30 or 60 days. My leadership would say that their cost was high, but realistically, they were in line with the market."
  • "The pricing is on target. Working with their sales team on pricing negotiations was a pleasant process. They were very respectful of the constraints we had and I feel that we're paying a fair price."
  • "It's valued at the right price. Even with the number of endpoints we have, we don't feel that it's a lot more than any competitor. In fact, it might be less expensive when you look at the fact that you're getting a full flex SOC out of it along with the tools."
  • "Binary Defense has changed its pricing model from being primarily based on the volume of data to one based on escalations and incidents they handle."
  • "Binary Defense MDR is priced competitively and may be slightly lower than CrowdStrike."
  • "After we acquired this platform, we met with a number of different vendors. Binary Defense came in with a proposal that was surprisingly affordable. In fact, we were able to recoup the cost of their services within a short period of time. This is because Binary Defense is able to provide the same level of security as a team of two or three in-house analysts but at a fraction of the cost. As a result, Binary Defense is saving us an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 per year."
  • "The pricing isn't that bad, it's very competitive. I don't feel that it's over-priced and I don't feel that it's under-priced."
  • More Binary Defense MDR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "I find their pricing to be reasonable and competitive."
  • "The pricing is fair."
  • "I rate the tool's pricing a nine out of ten."
  • "The pricing is pretty competitive."
  • More Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "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."
  • "It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
  • "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."
  • "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."
  • More CRITICALSTART Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians.
    Top Answer:Binary Defense is fairly priced. I would say that Binary Defense is flexible in negotiating and tailoring a solution… more »
    Top Answer:The only area I see for improvement with Binary Defense is their service portal. It could benefit from some… more »
    Top Answer:The agents give pretty good visibility into what is happening at the endpoint.
    Top Answer:It will be helpful if the dashboard is more granular. The vendor must allow us to see what they see on their end.
    Ask a question

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    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Binary Defense Vision, Binary Defense Managed Detection and Response, Binary Defense Managed Detection & Response
    Arctic Wolf AWN CyberSOC
    Critical Start, CriticalStart
    Learn More
    Overview

    Binary Defense provides a Managed Detection and Response service using an Open XDR strategy that detects and isolates threats early in the attack lifecycle. Expert security analysts in the Binary Defense Security Operations Center leverage an attacker’s mindset, monitoring your environments for security events 24x7x365 and acting as an extension of your security teams. When a security event occurs, Binary Defense analysts triage, disposition, and prioritize the event. Analysts conduct full kill chain analysis and supply tactical and strategic mitigation recommendations to your security team with the goal of increasing your organization’s security posture against the latest adversary threats.

    Visit us online at https://www.binarydefense.com

    Built on the industry’s only cloud-native platform to deliver security operations as a concierge service, the Arctic Wolf® Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution eliminates alert fatigue and false positives to promote a faster response with detection and response capabilities tailored to the specific needs of your organization. Your Arctic Wolf Concierge Security® Team (CST) works directly with you to perform threat hunting, incident response, and guided remediation, while also providing strategic recommendations uniquely customized for your environment.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Securitas USA, Black Hills Energy, Lincoln Electric,The J.M. Smuckers Company, New York Community Bank, State of Connecticut, NCR
    Agero, Madison Memorial Hospital, DLZ, Howard LLP, City of Sparks
    Information Not Available
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company33%
    Wholesaler/Distributor8%
    Insurance Company8%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Healthcare Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Insurance Company31%
    Legal Firm15%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm8%
    Government8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Energy/Utilities Company38%
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Hospitality Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business76%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise36%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise62%
    Buyer's Guide
    Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, Arctic Wolf Networks, Huntress and others in Managed Detection and Response (MDR). Updated: April 2024.
    768,246 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response is ranked 2nd in Managed Detection and Response (MDR) with 17 reviews while CRITICALSTART is ranked 30th in Managed Detection and Response (MDR). Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response is rated 9.2, while CRITICALSTART is rated 9.4. The top reviewer of Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response writes "Very good support, excellent visibility, and useful security bulletins". On the other hand, the top reviewer of CRITICALSTART writes "Offers the ability to close review tickets or alerts through a mobile phone and to interact with engineers on their side via the app". Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete, Huntress, Red Canary MDR, SentinelOne Vigilance and Microsoft Defender Experts for Hunting, whereas CRITICALSTART is most compared with BlueVoyant CORE, ReliaQuest GreyMatter, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete and Red Canary MDR.

    See our list of best Managed Detection and Response (MDR) vendors.

    We monitor all Managed Detection and Response (MDR) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.