We performed a comparison between CRITICALSTART and ServiceNow Security Operations based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can use Sentinel's playbook to block threats. It covers all of the environment, giving us great visibility."
"If you know how to do KQL (kusto query language) queries, which are how you query the log data inside Sentinel, the information is pretty rich. You can get down to a good level of detail regarding event information or notifications."
"Sentinel enables us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. In addition to integrating our Cisco ASA Firewall logs, we get our Palo Alto proxy logs and some on-premises data coming from our hardware devices... That is very important and is one way Sentinel is playing a wider role in our environment."
"The dashboard that allows me to view all the incidents is the most valuable feature."
"The product can integrate with any device."
"There are a lot of things you can explore as a user. You can even go and actively hunt for threats. You can go on the offensive rather than on the defensive."
"I believe one of the main advantages is Microsoft Sentinel's seamless integration with other Microsoft products."
"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"What I found most valuable in ServiceNow Security Operations is that it's very useful for any incoming vulnerability. For example, if my team finds any vulnerability on servers such as the CA and CMDB integrated with ServiceNow Security Operations, my team can make some changes. My team can map the vulnerabilities found on the CA server, make the changes required, and resolve the vulnerabilities before the system is attacked. You can avoid vulnerability attacks through ServiceNow Security Operations, so this is the best feature of the solution. ServiceNow Security Operations is beneficial mainly for vulnerability response and engagement purposes."
"Integration to other security tools allows for a consolidated view of all vulnerabilities, incidents, etc. for all sorts of leverage in a single platform to assess governance risk and compliance as well as an enhanced, enriched intelligence."
"The product has a very simple UI."
"It gives you the ability to bring data into the system. The workflows are out of the box, and it gives you the ability to auto-assign the incidents based on criteria and vulnerabilities."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is available over the cloud and is easy to manage."
"Reduces time to closure and closure metrics for vulnerabilities."
"We refer to the setup and installation guide provided by ServiceNow. They have good documentation, which makes it easier to handle the process."
"The following would be a challenge for any product in the market, but we have some in-house apps in our environment... our apps were built with different parameters and the APIs for them are not present in Sentinel. We are working with Microsoft to build those custom APIs that we require. That is currently in progress."
"If Sentinel had a graphical user interface, it would be easier to use. I would also like it to be more customizable."
"The learning curve could be improved. I am still learning it. We were able to implement the basic features to get them up and running, but there are still so many things that I don't know about all its features. They have a lot of features that we have not been able to use or apply. If they could work on reducing the solution's learning curve, that would be good. While there is a training course held by Microsoft to learn more about this solution, there is a cost associated with it."
"One key area that can be improved is by building a strong integration with our XDR platform."
"The solution should allow for a streamlined CI/CD procedure."
"Sentinel's alerts and notifications are not fully optimized for mobile devices. The overall reporting and the analytics processes for the end user should also be improved. Also, the compatibility and availability of data sources and reports are not always perfect."
"If you're looking to use canned queries, the interface could be a little more straightforward. It's not immediately intuitive regarding how you use it. You have to take a canned query and paste it into an operational box and then you hit a button... They could improve the ease of deploying these queries."
"For certain vendors, some of the data that Microsoft Sentinel captures is redacted due to privacy reasons."
"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 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."
"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."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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 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."
"They should stick to the roadmap and continue to build plugins and integrations with other third parties, enhance the UI, and enhance the reporting. It's all good. They should just continue enhancing the releases."
"It is challenging for the customers to understand the processes for SecOps. It needs to be simplified."
"An area for improvement I observed in ServiceNow Security Operations is the need to maintain correct CMDB data because if you're unable to do this, you can't perfectly maintain the vulnerability data. CMDB data in ServiceNow Security Operations needs to be accurate. As I've been working on ServiceNow Security Operations for only seven months, I still need more time to try all its modules before I can give recommendations regarding additional features I'd like to see in the solution."
"It doesn't interact with things very well."
"The solution needs to make customization easier. You cannot do much customization immediately. It requires an extensive workload. If the customization process was user-friendly, it would be much better."
"The product is called SecOps, but it is not security operations in terms of SIEM solutions."
"We'd like customization to be easier in terms of the UI and using the dashboards."
"The initial setup is difficult."
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CRITICALSTART is ranked 29th in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) while ServiceNow Security Operations is ranked 8th in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) with 15 reviews. CRITICALSTART is rated 9.4, while ServiceNow Security Operations is rated 8.0. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of ServiceNow Security Operations writes "Mature with nice UI and customizable workflows". CRITICALSTART is most compared with Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response, ReliaQuest GreyMatter, BlueVoyant CORE, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete and Red Canary, whereas ServiceNow Security Operations is most compared with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR, Splunk SOAR, IBM Resilient, Swimlane and Fortinet FortiSOAR. See our CRITICALSTART vs. ServiceNow Security Operations report.
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