CRITICALSTART vs eSentire comparison

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Binary Defense Logo
1,532 views|179 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Critical Start Logo
1,041 views|396 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
eSentire Logo
1,104 views|750 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CRITICALSTART and eSentire 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).
767,847 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 best part about Binary Defense MDR is that it runs on everything, and they keep an eye on things 24/7.""Binary Defense's most valuable feature is the 24/7 monitoring and threat hunting. Their team checks the latest breaches and how they're done.""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.""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.""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.""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 customization has been the most valuable aspect and was really the reason we ended up selecting Binary Defense. They worked with us to provide exactly the level of support, features, response, and collaboration we needed.""The most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians."

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"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 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.""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 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.""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."

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"The Managed Detection and Response (MDR) feature was really good and most valuable. We were handling very sensitive data, and we needed a quick response in real-time, which eSentire provided. It was also cost-effective, and their SOC team was very responsive.""The managed detection response (MDR) product was the most valuable."

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Cons
"Binary Defense MDR could be even better with additional features, like automatic scans and file quarantine.""The only area I see for improvement with Binary Defense is their service portal. It could benefit from some enhancements.""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.""We found a couple of bugs in the user interface.""The current reporting system could benefit from improvement.""I would like to get more reports from Binary Defense about what they're blocking.""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.""I would like to see more frequent check-ins with our security status."

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"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.""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.""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 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.""There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design.""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.""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."

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"From my standpoint, their MSP program, in general, needed to be worked on. It should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. I know it was in the process of being revamped, and as of the end of January, it was not finished.""Its GUI can be a lot better."

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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 →

  • "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 →

  • "It was cost-effective and not very expensive. Licensing was on a yearly basis. There were no additional costs to the standard licensing fee."
  • "The MSP model we were in needed some work. It was not MSP-friendly, which means that an MSP is going to say that I have five thousand endpoints that I will eventually get to you, but for now, we're gonna start moving and let me purchase a thousand. So, you buy a thousand licenses, and you ramp up to that thousand. When you're ready to move on, you buy the next how many. That's the way an MSP likes to work, whereas it was a little bit different with eSentire. You had to purchase specific amounts for specific customers. It wasn't very friendly when it came to pricing for MSPs."
  • More eSentire 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 »
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    Earn 20 points

    Top Answer:The managed detection response (MDR) product was the most valuable.
    Top Answer:The MSP model we were in needed some work. It was not MSP-friendly, which means that an MSP is going to say that I have… more »
    Top Answer:Their MSP program should be made much more simple. It's too convoluted in its process. They have two different kinds of… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Binary Defense Vision, Binary Defense Managed Detection and Response, Binary Defense Managed Detection & Response
    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

    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.

    eSentire is the largest pure-play Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service provider, keeping organizations safe from constantly evolving cyber-attacks that technology alone cannot prevent. Its 24x7 Security Operations Center (SOC), staffed by elite security analysts, hunts, investigates, and responds in real-time to known and unknown threats before they become business disrupting events.

    Sample Customers
    Securitas USA, Black Hills Energy, Lincoln Electric,The J.M. Smuckers Company, New York Community Bank, State of Connecticut, NCR
    Information Not Available
    Melissa & Doug, Mavenir System, COMMONFUND
    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
    Energy/Utilities Company38%
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Hospitality Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    Retailer7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Non Profit6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise31%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise36%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise48%
    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.
    767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    CRITICALSTART is ranked 30th in Managed Detection and Response (MDR) while eSentire is ranked 24th in Managed Detection and Response (MDR) with 2 reviews. CRITICALSTART is rated 9.4, while eSentire is rated 7.6. 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 eSentire writes "A solid product for security, but the MSP program should be simpler". CRITICALSTART is most compared with Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response, BlueVoyant CORE, ReliaQuest GreyMatter, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete and Red Canary MDR, whereas eSentire is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon Complete, Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response, Red Canary MDR, Sophos MDR and Huntress.

    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.