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CRITICALSTART vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (7th), AI-Powered Security Automation (2nd)
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
26th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (30th)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 4.5%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 6.2%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar6.2%
Torq4.5%
CRITICALSTART0.8%
Other88.5%
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

Nimrod Vardi - PeerSpot reviewer
Global IT Director at OpenWeb
Automation workflows have transformed our IT, enabling secure just-in-time access control
We work with them quite often, so we have a direct line regarding areas in Torq that have room for improvement. If we have a feature request, we can request it. I do not have anything in mind at the moment. We were a design partner for a short while, so we feel that they listen and that users of the system have an impact on the way the system is designed for the better. They have a new community, which is something that I personally suggested years ago. There are many people like me in different places and they might have already built the workflow that I need. Having the option to share workflows or to jump on a thread and say I have this need, did anyone ever build a workflow for it, is amazing. Someone would jump in and say yes, sure, here, take this workflow. I think this is an amazing thing and I really hope that the community will come alive because I think this is really powerful. This is something that I already suggested and it did happen eventually, and I am quite happy with it. I do not have any specific feature in mind that I have a need for at the moment.
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.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"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."
"Once I started to use the system and I saw the potential, it changed all of our work in IT."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"My impression of the transparency of the data is that it has good detail. It allows you to see how many events have come in, how many of those events have made it down to their analysts to review, and then however many from their analysts to be able to close out, have been able to been escalated to us. It's a good metric that we can share with my management. They see the value of what the SOC is bringing on top of what my team is already doing."
"The query search and log fetching are really helpful in IBM Security QRadar when compared to other tools."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration capabilities on offer."
"The scalability is good."
"I am fond of IBM Security QRadar because it is very user-friendly."
"Regarding the tool's ability to maintain high-security standards, I rate it ten out of ten."
"Most of the features are good. It is an excellent solution."
"The tool's most valuable feature is real-time detection."
"The pre-canned rules and reports in this product are a huge plus."
 

Cons

"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"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."
"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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..."
"There are a lot of things they are working on and a lot of technologies that are not yet there. They should probably work out a better reserve with their ecosystem of business partners and create wider and more in-depth qualities, third-party tools, and add-ons. These things really give immediate business value. For instance, there are many limitations in using SAP, EBS, or Micro-Dynamics. A lot of things that are happening in those platforms could also be monitored and allowed from the cybersecurity risks perspective. IBM might be leaving this gap or empty space for business partners. Some larger organizations might already be doing this. It would be very nice if IBM can make some artificial intelligence part free of charge for all current QRadar users. This would be a big advantage as compared to other competitors. There are companies that are going in different directions. Of course, you can't do everything inside QRadar. In general, it might be very good for all players to provide more use cases, especially regarding data protection and leakage prevention. There are some who are already doing some kind of file integrity or gathering some more information from all possible technologies for building anything related to the user and data analysis, content analysis, and management regarding the data protection."
"I'd like them to improve the offense. When QRadar detects something, it creates what it calls offenses. So, it has a rudimentary ticketing system inside of it. This is the same interface that was there when I started using it 12 years ago. It just has not been improved. They do allow integration with IBM Resilient, but IBM Resilient is grotesquely expensive. The most effective integration that IBM offers today is with IBM Resilient, which is an instant response platform. It is a very good platform, but it is very expensive. They really should do something with the offense handling because it is very difficult to scale, and it has limitations. The maximum number of offenses that it can carry is 16K. After 16K, you have to flush your offenses out. So, it is all or nothing. You lose all your offenses up until that point in time, and you don't have any history within the offense list of older events. If you're dealing with multiple customers, this becomes problematic. That's why you need to use another product to do the actual ticketing. If you wanted the ticket existence, you would normally interface with ServiceNow, SolarWinds, or some other product like that."
"The solution lacks vendor support."
"The GUI or graphic interface for IBM Security QRadar is neither good nor bad, but I hope for it to be more interesting, more live, and have better style."
"QVM is another instance where they need to revise the vulnerability scoring and the proper remediation details."
"There could be better integration with the solution."
"The solution can be improved by lowering the cost and bettering their technical support."
"The tech support is not that good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"Customers have to purchase a license based on the number of users, devices, and applications they want to protect. It allows you to take a license on a subscription basis for three years or five years."
"It's free of charge."
"There are additional costs, such as the cost associated with the different hardware required for implementation and deployment. Along with the add-on apps, these are all additional costs, and they require licensing as well."
"There is a license required for this solution and it is an annual payment. I have found all solutions in the category to be expensive, including Splunk."
"The pricing is higher but cheaper than others and there are no additional costs."
"IBM QRadar is a little bit expensive compared to other products."
"QRadar is quite expensive. It wouldn't be worth it for a small business..."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
Regarding the downsides of Torq, one issue is that as a SaaS product, I sometimes encounter transparency issues about...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
My role is Cyber Security Engineer, and we use Torq for our case management platform, automating some of our phishing...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
Torq's maintenance requirements depend on how you define maintenance. While Torq handles the platform's overall relia...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendli...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
Pricing and the license of EPS were managed by the governance team. I was not responsible for managing those. I was s...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.