01 / Crowmark vs UnderDefense
Services-heavy MDR/SOC is the right answer
— for a team that wants a named analyst pod on retainer.
Both ship detection and a human in the loop — the shape of that human is the difference. UnderDefense staffs a named analyst pod for mid-market and enterprise; Crowmark ships AI auto-containment plus a per-seat morning brief for the 4-to-50 person team. Six dimensions, side by side, neither dressed up.
Six dimensions, side by side
Written in the question a buyer actually asks — not the vendor’s label. UnderDefense is described in their own framing; where they’re materially stronger on a row, we say so.
| What you weigh | Crowmark What we ship Always-on AI SOC for the one- or two-person security team — per-seat, cancel any month. | UnderDefense Their framing Services-heavy MDR/SOC provider aimed at mid-market and enterprise — manual triage by named analyst teams, scoped engagement. |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage scopeWhat the brief is actually watching |
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| Target buyerDirect buyer vs scoped engagement | A 4-to-50 person company buying direct — one buyer, monthly invoice, cancel any month. | Mid-market and enterprise buying scoped MDR/SOC engagements — named analyst pod per account, retainer billed. |
| Pricing modelPer-seat vs engagement | Per-seat, monthly. Bronze $49, Silver $99, Gold $199. Annual option saves ~15%. Cancel any month. | Engagement-based pricing — custom proposal scoped to the retainer; annual, not per-seat, not per-alert. |
| Onboarding timeFrom signed contract to first useful signal | Self-serve. SSO and IdP linking in one afternoon; first brief lands the next weekday. | 2–4 weeks of dedicated setup — scoped kickoff, runbook alignment, analyst pod introduction before steady-state coverage. |
| Dark-web + CVE handlingHow leak and vulnerability signals reach you | Continuous credential + domain leak monitoring plus a CVE feed matched to your stack — both surface in the same morning brief, no separate console to log into. | External vulnerability scans and credential exposure are reviewed by the analyst pod — surfaced through the engagement portal and weekly reports. |
| Human-hours per monthHours your team spends triaging | 0–2 hours per month — AI auto-contains low-confidence items before the brief; your team reads only what needs a human. | 3–6 hours per month coordinating with the named pod, plus an internal review whenever the analyst team routes back for confirmation. |
| Next step | Start a pilot | Visit UnderDefense |
Always-on AI SOC for the one- or two-person security team — per-seat, cancel any month.
- Coverage scope
- EndpointCrowdStrike, Defender, SentinelOne — telemetry + containment actions.
- IdentityOkta, Entra, Google — sign-in risk and token abuse flagged in the morning brief.
- CloudAWS, Azure, GCP — control-plane events, IAM drift, exposed storage.
- Dark webContinuous credential + domain leak monitoring — surfaced in the brief.
- CVEsCVE feed matched to your stack — only the ones you actually run make the brief.
- Target buyerA 4-to-50 person company buying direct — one buyer, monthly invoice, cancel any month.
- Pricing modelPer-seat, monthly. Bronze $49, Silver $99, Gold $199. Annual option saves ~15%. Cancel any month.
- Onboarding timeSelf-serve. SSO and IdP linking in one afternoon; first brief lands the next weekday.
- Dark-web + CVE handlingContinuous credential + domain leak monitoring plus a CVE feed matched to your stack — both surface in the same morning brief, no separate console to log into.
- Human-hours per month0–2 hours per month — AI auto-contains low-confidence items before the brief; your team reads only what needs a human.
Services-heavy MDR/SOC provider aimed at mid-market and enterprise — manual triage by named analyst teams, scoped engagement.
- Coverage scope
- EndpointEDR plus SIEM telemetry covered by a named analyst pod — connector list sized to the retainer scope.
- IdentityOkta, Entra, Google — identity threat signals reviewed by the analyst pod, with triage on each flagged session.
- CloudAWS, Azure, GCP control-plane misconfiguration routed to the analyst pod — lighter than a dedicated CSPM tool, scoped to the engagement.
- Dark webContinuous credential exposure monitoring surfaced through analyst review inside the engagement delivery channel.
- CVEsExternal vulnerability scan feeds routed to the analyst pod — surfaced per engagement scope and reviewed weekly.
- Target buyerMid-market and enterprise buying scoped MDR/SOC engagements — named analyst pod per account, retainer billed.
- Pricing modelEngagement-based pricing — custom proposal scoped to the retainer; annual, not per-seat, not per-alert.
- Onboarding time2–4 weeks of dedicated setup — scoped kickoff, runbook alignment, analyst pod introduction before steady-state coverage.
- Dark-web + CVE handlingExternal vulnerability scans and credential exposure are reviewed by the analyst pod — surfaced through the engagement portal and weekly reports.
- Human-hours per month3–6 hours per month coordinating with the named pod, plus an internal review whenever the analyst team routes back for confirmation.
Where UnderDefense is materially stronger (depth of retainer-billed coverage, named analyst pod on the engagement, war-room posture on declared incidents), it’s labelled above. The matrix is honest on purpose — a buyer scanning for a real comparison reads the rows we don’t win.
Founder note
The question to ask first is who’s actually buying. UnderDefense is shaped for the mid-market or enterprise team that wants a named analyst pod reviewing every alert and is comfortable paying retainer-billed engagement fees for it. Crowmark is shaped for the 4-to-50 person company where the buyer is closer to the operator — the founder, the head of IT, the one-person security function. The two products are solving different problems for different buyers; the question is which one is yours.
UnderDefense’s buyer is usually a CISO or director who knows what a scoped MDR engagement costs and has already budgeted for it. They want a real human on the phone when an incident is declared, and they’re explicitly paying for the depth that comes from a named analyst pod running triage on every alert. The retainer buys depth of analyst time, depth of scoped coverage, and someone picking up the war-room line when something real is unfolding. UnderDefense scales the engagement to the agreed scope and staffs the pod to match. If that’s your buyer profile — mid-market or enterprise, retainer appetite, declared-incident war-room as a hard requirement — UnderDefense delivers.
Crowmark’s buyer sits closer to the operator — the founder, the head of IT, the one-person security function at a 4-to-50 person company. They don’t have the procurement budget for a scoped engagement and they don’t want to carry the retainer overhead either. Math is per-seat monthly: Bronze $49, Silver $99, Gold $199, cancel any month. A four-person company on Bronze pays under $200/month total for the morning brief, the AI containment, and the cancel-any-month escape hatch. Coverage is endpoint, identity, cloud, dark-web, and CVEs — five areas in one brief. AI auto-contains low-confidence items before the team opens the brief, which is what makes 0–2 human-hours per month sustainable without an analyst pod on retainer.
The matrix above is honest on which rows UnderDefense wins. They win on depth of retainer-billed coverage — more analyst hours, deeper scoped engagements, a named relationship that compounds over a quarter or a year. They win on the human war-room call when a real incident is declared; that’s specifically what a retainer buys. They also win on the audit posture a regulated mid-market buyer is used to — the named pod, the weekly review, the scoped-retainer paper trail compliance can point to during a SOC 2 cycle or a customer security review. They will not be cheaper than Crowmark if all you actually need is the morning brief, and they will not match per-seat month-to-month math a 4-to-50 person company can afford without procurement overhead.
What Crowmark trades for that depth is speed and price math. Onboarding is self-serve — SSO and IdP linking in one afternoon, first brief the next weekday. Triage hours stay at 0–2 per month because the AI auto-contains before a human reads; your team only sees what actually needs a human. There’s no analyst pod to schedule around, no retainer to renegotiate if the team’s headcount drops from 12 to 9, no engagement letter to redline with legal. The product scales with the company instead of against it. That’s what makes the per-seat model useful at this size.
The honest split: for a 4-to-50 person company with no appetite for a scoped engagement, pick Crowmark. You’ll get the morning brief on day one and a per-seat invoice your operator-buyer can sign without a procurement cycle. For a mid-market or enterprise team that explicitly wants a named analyst pod and retainer-billed coverage, pick UnderDefense. They’re set up to deliver the war-room call when a real incident is declared, and that’s the product you’re paying for.
See the per-seat math → · How we compare SOC-managed vs MDR →
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