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CRITICALSTART vs ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) 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)
ThreatConnect Threat Intell...
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (7th)
 

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 ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is 3.0%, up from 2.1% 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%
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)3.0%
CRITICALSTART1.4%
Other92.1%
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.
Nikhil Jethwa - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Consultant at ProTechmanize Solutions (P) Ltd.
Centralized threat intelligence has streamlined IOC workflows and now improves response time
ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) has positively impacted our organization by significantly reducing response times and improving detection accuracy by ensuring only high-confidence, context-rich indicators are pushed to security controls. From an operational standpoint, ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) has helped us reduce IOC handling and response time from hours to minutes by automating injection, enrichment, and distribution workflows.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Under one SOC tool in Torq, analysts get to know everything within the context of an alert or incident they are working on, and this ability to view the whole picture within Torq is one of the major breakthroughs and best offerings of Torq."
"Any request that comes in, regardless of how complex it is, I can accomplish it with Torq."
"What I appreciate most about Torq is that it is an essential part of our system."
"Torq's unified platform approach to AI, SOAR, automation, and case management is superior compared to my experience managing multiple point solutions."
"Torq has helped a lot regarding SOC analyst efficiency."
"As an analyst, it has demonstrated potential to reduce workforce requirements and time needed for related activities."
"It is a comfort to know that there is a team of professionals backing you up, especially in an area that you don't feel 100 percent comfortable."
"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."
"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."
"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 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 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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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 most valuable features are ease of use and the ability to customize it."
"It's a solid platform and is stable enough. It is not complicated and is easy to use."
"ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) has positively impacted our organization by significantly reducing response times and improving detection accuracy by ensuring only high-confidence, context-rich indicators are pushed to security controls."
"ThreatConnect has a highly user-friendly interface; I loved it, and it's really great and easy to configure."
"It is used to help an operations team with the identification and resolution of threats in an automated, zero-touch fashion."
"The product automatically generated a threat score based on the maliciousness of an IP."
"The tool's installation, integration, and playbooks are very straightforward."
 

Cons

"Torq can probably use more ML and look at what can be closed and what cannot be closed in terms of data classification."
"There are some issues and bugs that I think need to be fixed, but they are currently not focused on it."
"Torq does extensive marketing saying that SOAR is dead and markets itself as an all-in-one solution, but this is not actually true."
"If Torq could enhance its AI features, it would benefit customers significantly by making the platform even more user-friendly."
"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."
"The initial deployment of Torq was not easy."
"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."
"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."
"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 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 biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"Support is an area with which nobody is ever fully satisfied, so it can be improved."
"They should make it a little bit easier to generate events and share them with the community."
"I couldn’t get any training videos online when I was working with the tool."
"Integration is an area that could use some improvement."
"It would be good to have more feeds and more integrated sources for enrichment."
"ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) could be improved by simplifying the user interface to better fit day-to-day analyst workflow and reducing the complexity of configuring playbook and score logic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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."
"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 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."
"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 tool is expensive."
"I rate the product price as six on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten means it is cheap."
"The price could be better."
"The price of this product is in the mid-range, not too expensive, nor inexpensive."
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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%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Retailer
7%
 

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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise5
 

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...
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)?
My experience with ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that...
What needs improvement with ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)?
Based on my experience, ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is already doing a great job in the market b...
What is your primary use case for ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP)?
Our main use case for ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) is to centralize, analyze, and operationalize ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Critical Start, CriticalStart
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Customer Case Studies & Use Cases
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP) and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.