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CRITICALSTART vs McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator 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
6.5
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (1st), AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
24th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (27th)
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Torq is 3.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is 1.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Torq3.5%
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator1.8%
CRITICALSTART1.4%
Other93.3%
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.
Binu Haneef - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at Sky News Arabia
Comprehensive security management enabled through efficient integration and automation
McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator helps automate routine security tasks. We created customized automation. For example, when we did not have an EDR or XDR solution, we created tasks exclusively for detection and response automation and automatic segregation of infected PCs. The ability to customize the dashboard in McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator helps us significantly. The main feature is automation for auto-segmentation and segregation. As we are in an AI era, McAfee can focus on AI tools. Instead of putting manual effort into each security-related task, it can implement more advanced automation using AI. This enhancement could improve cybersecurity significantly. Regarding the reporting area in McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, we are satisfied with what we currently have. Our cybersecurity team needs customized reports beyond the default ones. We have more than 20 separate reports for identifying threats, managing, and understanding the security posture of our company and assets.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Torq's unified platform approach to AI, SOAR, automation, and case management is superior compared to my experience managing multiple point solutions."
"With Torq, I automate actions while achieving SLA compliance and streamline alert investigation processes much better."
"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."
"Torq offers the best feature through integration with AI."
"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"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."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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."
"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."
"The biggest lesson is transitioning from alert overload to being at a point where we do have eyes on alerts, where every alert is truly possible."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"We get fewer false positives than with other solutions."
"This is a solution I recommend very much."
"It is a highly scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"I really like the auditing component because it really looks at exactly what has happened on the network."
"The solution's best part is that it is very easy to manage McAfee Agent."
"The automation alert for the ticketing tool is one of the vital features"
"The graphical interface of the solution is its most valuable aspect."
"I like McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator software; it is great centralized security management software that allows management of various McAfee products on the client computers and makes risk and compliance management in the organization simpler and more reliable."
 

Cons

"There are some issues and bugs that I think need to be fixed, but they are currently not focused on it."
"We have MCP that we are working with our cloud security platform, and we wanted to connect this MCP to the case management."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"If Torq could enhance its AI features, it would benefit customers significantly by making the platform even more user-friendly."
"I wish Torq's AI assistant for building templated workflows from scratch worked better; when you start with a blank slate, asking AI to help you build or template the workflow out does not go well."
"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 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."
"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."
"There is a problem when it comes to agent communication and duplicate records, where the rebooting of a machine leads to the installation of a new agent and you get a lot of duplicate records that ultimately affect your compliance monitoring."
"The technical support from McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator was very good with technically efficient professionals previously. However, recently I have noticed that support staff are primarily L1, and even when escalating to L2 or L3, we do not see the same level of expertise in people resolving issues."
"Features such as full drive encryption are lacking in the cloud version."
"There should be more insights and completeness into the cyber kill chain, similar to CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. It just seems a little outdated in being 100% signature-based without all of the insights and protections that come with CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. Overall, they've got some catching up to do if they plan to compete in the comprehensive EDR space."
"The solution could improve the EDR component in many areas, such as the zero-day and persistent threats. The implementation is also complex for this feature."
"Lacks a single plug-in for multiple uses."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the impact of the agent on the endpoint's performance - the resources it takes."
"They have to do something to make the solution more resilient or recoverable from power failure events, which may include creating their own database."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"$The price of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is expensive, it is approximately $6,000 to $9,000 per license annually."
"It's an expensive solution"
"Compared to other Antivirus products, the cost of this solution is a bit high."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is not an expensive solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"For large enterprise companies, the price should be alright, but for small businesses, the uptake might be slow because, for these clients, the price doesn't look very attractive."
"There is a license required to use this solution. If we use the additional components, such as DLP encryption, there is an additional cost. However, it is similar to a separate product altogether. If you want to use that or not, it is optional, but when you use it, it will cost you additional pricing."
"McAfee tries to package different things into different products, then sell them as different products with different licenses. They just split everything up into multiple things. That's just their sales pitch and how they do it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
There are some bugs in Torq, of course. They can be present in data transformation, some UI debugging, and other area...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
My main use case for Torq is the automation of cyber security processes through a SOAR platform and APIs. A main exam...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
Regarding someone thinking about using Torq, I recommend looking into their provided academy to start working with th...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which is better - Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator network secur...
What needs improvement with McAfee MVISION ePO?
There is a question regarding suggestions for additional tools or functions for McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, and whet...
What is your primary use case for McAfee MVISION ePO?
The question pertains to describing the use case and process for which people utilize McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
McAfee ePO, ePolicy Orchestrator, Intel Security ePolicy Orchestrator, McAfee MVISION ePO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Brelje & Race, Cognizant, Sutherland Global Services, Eagle Rock Energy, Arab National Bank, Bank Central Asia, Kleberg Bank, Leading Mexican Bank, SF Police Credit Union, Macquarie Telecom, Seagate Technology, Blackburn & Darwen Council, California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, IRCEP, Major U.S. State Government, State of Alaska, State of Colorado, Cemex, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.