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CRITICALSTART vs ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) 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
6.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (1st), AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
25th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (28th)
ThreatConnect Threat Intell...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.6%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Torq3.6%
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)3.1%
CRITICALSTART1.3%
Other92.0%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

AD
Solutions Architect at ProArch
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.
Nikhil Jethwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Consultant at ProTechmanize Solutions (P) Ltd.
Centralized threat intelligence has streamlined IOC workflows and now improves response time
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) has positively impacted our organization by significantly reducing response times and improving detection accuracy by ensuring only high-confidence, context-rich indicators are pushed to security controls. From an operational standpoint, ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) has helped us reduce IOC handling and response time from hours to minutes by automating injection, enrichment, and distribution workflows.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I liked the most about Torq is the actual workflow builder, which is really great because they offer a lot of features and convenience features that are useful for any automation engineer."
"We have seen fewer failures of automations from the time Torq came into the picture, we've had a more streamlined process of handling incidents, and at the same time, we've learned to embed the AI into our incident types, and that is how it has helped us in the automation."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"Any request that comes in, regardless of how complex it is, I can accomplish it with Torq."
"Torq has definitely changed the day-to-day experience for our security analysts, as they feel more excited and feel that Torq interface and workflow allow them to build things themselves."
"Under one SOC tool in Torq, analysts get to know everything within the context of an alert or incident they are working on, and this ability to view the whole picture within Torq is one of the major breakthroughs and best offerings of Torq."
"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"Using that one piece of AI, we auto-closed 511 cases in quarter four alone."
"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."
"In a given quarter, I get 589,000 security events and 584,000 of those get reduced by the service before they even get to me, so the alerts that actually come through to me end up being about 1,400 in that quarter, which is a 99.7 percent efficiency rate."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"It is used to help an operations team with the identification and resolution of threats in an automated, zero-touch fashion."
"It's a solid platform and is stable enough. It is not complicated and is easy to use."
"The tool's installation, integration, and playbooks are very straightforward."
"The product automatically generated a threat score based on the maliciousness of an IP."
"ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) has positively impacted our organization by significantly reducing response times and improving detection accuracy by ensuring only high-confidence, context-rich indicators are pushed to security controls."
"ThreatConnect has a highly user-friendly interface; I loved it, and it's really great and easy to configure."
"The most valuable features are ease of use and the ability to customize it."
 

Cons

"If Torq could enhance its AI features, it would benefit customers significantly by making the platform even more user-friendly."
"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."
"It was able to capture data but was unable to differentiate between the agent hostname we are using and the hostname that resides on the back end of the Internet."
"Torq can be improved by adding some more features, such as adding more automation and providing a no-code option so I don't have to code for everything."
"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"However, we did encounter some problems with custom steps, which definitely affected our progress, and the speed of bug fixes is also a bit slower than expected."
"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."
"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 biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"It would be good to have more feeds and more integrated sources for enrichment."
"I couldn’t get any training videos online when I was working with the tool."
"They should make it a little bit easier to generate events and share them with the community."
"ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) could be improved by simplifying the user interface to better fit day-to-day analyst workflow and reducing the complexity of configuring playbook and score logic."
"Integration is an area that could use some improvement."
"Support is an area with which nobody is ever fully satisfied, so it can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"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."
"The price of this product is in the mid-range, not too expensive, nor inexpensive."
"The tool is expensive."
"The price could be better."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten means it is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
Torq can be improved by adding some more features, such as adding more automation and providing a no-code option so I...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
My main use case for Torq is reviewing the incidents and responding to them. After that, I investigate them and take ...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
I would definitely recommend others to use Torq as it is an all-rounder tool which even integrates AI. As we all know...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)?
My experience with ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that...
What needs improvement with ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)?
Based on my experience, ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is already doing a great job in the market b...
What is your primary use case for ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)?
Our main use case for ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is to centralize, analyze, and operationalize ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Customer Case Studies & Use Cases
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.