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CRITICALSTART vs Carbon Black Managed Detection and Response comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 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

Carbon Black Managed Detect...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
29th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Carbon Black Managed Detection and Response is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.3%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CRITICALSTART1.3%
Carbon Black Managed Detection and Response1.2%
Other97.5%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

JS
IT Security & Audit Compliance Analyst at Milwaukee City and County
It provides an overview of all our assets and their status.
We use Carbon Black for monitoring.  We haven't experienced any significant incidents, yet. So far, we've mostly been weeding out all the false positives.  Carbon Black provides an overview of all our assets and their status.  Carbon Black's support could be better.  I have used Carbon Black…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The valuable features are threat hunting, threat intelligence feeds, and it culls all the activities of the endpoint. Additionally, the ML and AI engines are really good."
"The installation process is quick and easy."
"The greatest value of MDR involves the tests, reporting and alerts, so that we may respond immediately."
"Carbon Black provides an overview of all our assets and their status."
"This is where Carbon Black has been phenomenal for us, it has detected many security concerns."
"I don't have to take care of this product; it's just working and that's it, and I don't have to think about anything."
"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."
"Out of all the service providers I've had to work with over the years—I've been here six years—CRITICALSTART is my favorite to work with."
"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."
"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 way that the user interface presents data enables our team to be able to make decisions significantly quicker, rather than have to dig into the details or go back to the original tools."
"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."
"In a given quarter, I get 589,000 security events and 584,000 of those get reduced by the service before they even get to me, so the alerts that actually come through to me end up being about 1,400 in that quarter, which is a 99.7 percent efficiency rate."
"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."
 

Cons

"In the future, it would be great if they could provide endpoint management and the ADR solution together in this package."
"As the solution has changed hands, I expect some changes in licensing and in support. It remains to be seen if that will be good or bad."
"Carbon Black's support could be better."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution is inexpensive compare with others. The company went out of its way to provide us with a favorable discount. However, there is room for improving the current licensing model and the price of some of the fees. The model is complex and could be streamlined."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 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."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
19%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

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

Also Known As

Carbon Black Cloud Managed Detection Deliver
Critical Start, CriticalStart
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Coincheck, Mednax, Charles River, Chick-fil-A, Netflix, Domino's Pizza
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Carbon Black Managed Detection and Response and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.