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CRITICALSTART vs NetWitness NDR comparison

 

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

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
31st
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (32nd)
NetWitness NDR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (59th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (35th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (63rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (20th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (36th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness NDR is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

PB
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.
SupravatMaji - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial single unified dashboard, good native application integration, and high availability
My advice to those wanting to implement RSA NetWitness Network is they have to first do a little due diligence, such as the exact requirement based on their needs. That will give them a direction for their investment because otherwise, the bill of material or bill of quantity (BOQ) may be higher side. It is important to do good due intelligence on the environment, see the exact requirement, and then go ahead with the solution. The solution is perfectly stable. I rate RSA NetWitness Network a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the way it captures the traffic, and it contains every detail of the communication."
"It is stable. We have been using it for some time, without any issues."
"It's a scalable solution. We have around five to eight customers using RSA NetWitness Endpoint, and we hope to increase the number of users."
"Technical support is knowledgeable."
"We've contacted technical support several times. They've been very good. They have been able to help us resolve our issues."
"The most valuable feature of RSA NetWitness Network is the single unified dashboard from which you can manage all the different products of RSA. Additionally, the integration with native applications is good."
"The interface of this solution is very flexible and easy to use."
"The stability of the RSA NetWitness Endpoint is very good."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 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..."
"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."
"The deployment process is complex. I don't know why, but this solution will suddenly stop working. Logs stop coming. Often, one thing or another stops working. Most of the time, one of my team members is working with troubleshooting and working with technical support. Log passing is also one of the biggest challenge."
"When analyzing something, you have to click several times. It requires a lot of effort to find something."
"The integration of the solution needs to be improved. The dashboard needs lots of updates as well. In the next release, we would like to see advanced fraud detection features."
"The threat intelligence could improve in RSA NetWitness Endpoint."
"RSA NetWitness Network could improve on integration with non-native application integration."
"I would like to see Security Orchestration and Response Automation (SOAR) integration."
"The solution is modular, for example you can buy the RSA ePack, which you buy as a module is not part of the conduit solution. They could include it and have it as an all-in-one solution."
"The initial setup requires a high level of skill."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The price of the solution depends on the environment. If the environment is large then it will cost more. However, the larger the environment with more endpoints, you will receive an increased discount. If the environment is very small, then you might think it is expensive. It is always better to buy in bulk to receive a discount. The minimum number of assets is usually 500, with discounts on 1000 and 2000."
"The cost depends on the number of endpoints that you want to monitor, but it is not expensive."
"It is highly scalable. It can be bought based on your requirements."
"I do not have any opinion on the pricing or licensing of the product."
"They can easily adjust if you have the requirements which are required. If you have a budget cut or a budget constraint, they can bend."
"With RSA, there is flexibility in choosing the service, products, and the range that meets your requirement, as well as they are flexible in terms of pricing."
"We are on a three-year contract to use RSA NetWitness Network."
"It is an expensive product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
RSA ECAT, NetWitness Network
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, Ameritas, Partners Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. NetWitness NDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.