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CRITICALSTART vs Fortinet FortiSOAR 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
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
16
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)
Fortinet FortiSOAR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Fortinet FortiSOAR is 3.6%, down from 4.4% 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%
Fortinet FortiSOAR3.6%
CRITICALSTART1.3%
Other91.5%
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.
VIJAICYRIAC - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Movate
Automated playbooks have reduced response times and provided deeper threat analytics
The effectiveness of Fortinet FortiSOAR playbooks is that they minimize the mean time to response and MTTR, and I think more automation is required to improve the response time. I am working with the Dynamic Case Management feature, and it is dynamic. The Dynamic Case Management feature is more helpful for us to get real-time anomalies and identify the threats. It also assists in real-time response, so it is helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Torq has helped a lot regarding SOC analyst efficiency."
"If I review about 100 vendors that I might work with, Torq is definitely in the top five that gave me personally investment back, just because every bit of effort I put into Torq eventually became a workflow that gave it back to me."
"Since we started working with Torq, I am handling much fewer alerts, it is becoming really easy for me to handle an alert, I have all the information that I need, I do not need to connect to different vendors to receive this information, and the main thing I got from Torq is time, which now helps me to build another automated system and learn."
"According to positive outcomes, Torq reduced manual work and made incident response more efficient."
"Torq has exceeded expectations by delivering workflows in a timely and lower effort manner than XSOAR, and it meets all my needs while saving a ton of time and targeting $600,000 saved this year, which is a substantial amount of money."
"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."
"Once I started to use the system and I saw the potential, it changed all of our work in 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."
"CRITICALSTART makes us much more comfortable with knowing someone else is watching our data and our systems and knowing that professional security people are taking a look at any issues that do arise."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"We are absolutely seeing return on our investment from CRITICALSTART's services, as they're doing the job of a 24/7 SOC at a fraction of the price that it would cost me to run it myself."
"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."
"We use the product for security."
"The solution automates everything using the playbooks and pre-deployed response mitigation scenarios."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiSOAR is the playbook, which has to be defined to apply the policies."
"The most valuable feature is its centralization as you don't want to be going to different locations to correlate items or to piece anything together to derive meaningful insights."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiSOAR is the number of available connectors and the simplicity to start to automate."
"I like that the solution is integrated with FortiAnalyzer, it's the best feature."
"The solution has many connectors, which is quite helpful."
"Generally, the tool helps just automating a lot of manual load or repetitive tasks."
 

Cons

"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."
"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."
"If Torq could enhance its AI features, it would benefit customers significantly by making the platform even more user-friendly."
"Additionally, the documentation for Torq is not very clear. Most of the information is presented in videos, which are not ideal for reading; there are mostly paragraphs and other text-based content."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."
"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 and I hate it."
"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 costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 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."
"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 tool's user interface is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"I don't currently see where the solution is lacking features. For us and for our clients it works very well and we're pleased with it."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Fortinet's tech support overall is not great when they are at their best."
"We need more fine-tuning for ChatGPT, especially when creating connectors."
"The solution doesn't connect well with the network devices, with FortiNAC. It's also a very expensive product and I've found that the Fortinet engineers don't have much experience with the product and they require training, particularly when dealing with enterprise organizations."
"The solution lacks proper documentation, so we have to test and trial each playbook and integration."
"The UI design of the solution needs to be changed since it can get difficult for a newbie to operate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"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."
"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 pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"Pricing is fine compared to other solutions."
"The solution offers both licensing and subscription models that are similar in price to other products."
"Fortinet FortiSOAR is an expensive solution."
"Considering all the features of Fortinet FortiSOAR, I think it has a good price."
"The price of the product should be lower. The brand value that Fortinet has, it has the reputation of being a reasonably priced product, and they have an enormous customer base in India. Most of the SME market is covered by FortiGate firewalls. It becomes an easy way for consultants, such as us, or even system integrators, to open the door with the Fortinet product lines."
"If you compare Fortinet FortiSOAR's price with the prices of the market leader, Palo Alto, then it can be considered a cheaper product."
"Fortinet FortiSOAR is expensive."
"Since Africa is struggling with foreign exchange, the solution is pretty expensive there."
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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%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
The only thing is more out-of-the-box integrations. Torq already has a lot of supported integrations and adding new o...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
For Torq, first of all, it's a hyperautomation and AI assistant usage. Our EDR SentinelOne is integrated in Torq and ...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
I think I have told everything about Torq that I can share at this stage, but I am still in the process of learning t...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSOAR?
The product is expensive, but it is a value-for-money product. It is a good product to invest in, eventually securing...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSOAR?
Fortinet FortiSOAR has to be updated on the recent threats. Threats are changing, and it has to be updated to meet th...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiSOAR?
I have been working in my field for almost four years, but right now I am not using it because my current company is ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
CyberSponse, FortiSOAR
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Fortinet FortiSOAR and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.