Resource Type: Press Release

Plano, TX — September 16, 2024 —- Critical Start, a leader in Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and a pioneer in Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), is pleased to announce the appointment of Scott White as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. Following the retirement and this planned executive transition, Rob Davis, Founder of Critical Start, will serve as Executive Chairman and continue to support the company’s mission of stopping customer business disruption by preventing breaches.  

Coming off record new business growth year to date, this appointment marks a new phase in Critical Start’s trajectory as the business continues to accelerate along its path to market leadership in the high-growth category of Managed Detection & Response .

White is an accomplished technology executive with significant experience building and leading high performing software companies. He most recently served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Revenue Officer at DoiT International, a leading global cloud SaaS and Advisory Services company, where he played a key role in scaling the go-to-market and sales teams, contributing to a 750% increase in bookings during his tenure. Before joining DoiT, White held senior leadership positions at Chargify, Mailgun, and Rackspace. 

“I am honored to join Critical Start and build upon the strong legacy established by Rob Davis,” said Scott White, Chief Executive Officer, Critical Start. “His dedication and visionary leadership have laid a strong foundation for the company’s future. Together with the talented team at Critical Start, I am excited to drive continued innovation, enhance our solutions, and deliver exceptional service to our clients.” 

“I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved at Critical Start and grateful for the opportunity to have built such an amazing company and lead an incredible team,” said Rob Davis, Founder and Executive Chairman, Critical Start. “I am confident that Scott will bring fresh perspectives and ideas, and I look forward to partnering with him to drive our continued success.” 

 Rob Davis founded Critical Start in 2012, and he has since worked to establish it as a category leader in MDR and developed the emerging category of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction.  

About Critical Start  

Organizations today face the challenge of optimally aligning their cyber protection measures to reduce the risk of breaches and business disruptions. CRITICALSTART® Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is the foundation to Managed Cyber Risk Reduction, which improves security operations outcomes and minimizes the probability and impact of breaches.  

Utilizing their Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, they integrate industry-leading tools and proactive cybersecurity intelligence into the Security Operations Center (SOC) — such as comprehensive asset inventories, EDR coverage gaps, asset criticality, MITRE ATT&CK® Mitigations, and vulnerability management. Their security operations team evaluates and responds to threats, vulnerabilities, and risks, while conducting extensive threat intelligence research. Supported by a human-led security operations team with over 10 years of MDR experience, Critical Start empowers businesses to protect their critical assets, demonstrating a measurable return on investment.  

The platform offers maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and robust response capabilities. This approach ensures the greatest risk reduction of a breach, enabling them to confidently reach their desired risk tolerance levels.  

For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, @CRITICALSTART, or on Twitter, @ CRITICALSTART.  

Report finds manufacturing and industrial industries as the most targeted sectors by bad actors; Use of deepfakes increases exponentially

PLANO, TX – August 22, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leader in Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and a pioneer in Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), released its biannual Cyber Threat Intelligence Report, featuring the top threats observed in the first half of 2024, and emerging cybersecurity trends impacting the manufacturing, healthcare, technology, professional services, engineering, and construction industries. The report also includes actionable insights to help organizations strengthen their security posture and proactively mitigate potential cyber risk.  

Global cybercrime has shown no sign of decline and is expected to grow by 15 percent per year over the next five years, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion in 2015. To identify the most urgent cybersecurity threats of the first half of 2024, the Critical Start Cyber Research Unit (CRU) analyzed 3,438 high and critical alerts generated by 20 supported Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions, as well as 4,602 reports detailing ransomware and database leak activities across 24 industries in 126 countries.

The first half of 2024 saw a worrying trend in cyberattacks targeting specific industries and key report findings include:  

• Manufacturing and Industrial Products remains the top targeted industry by cyber threat actors in H1 2024, leading with 377 confirmed reports of ransomware and database leak hits in the first half of the year 

• Professional Services saw an increase in reported database leaks and ransomware attacks, jumping by 15% compared to 2023 with 351 cases reported vs. 334. Legal services organizations, including courthouses, and supply chains have become prime targets due to the wealth of intellectual property and sensitive data they possess 

• Healthcare & Life Sciences ransomware and database leak incidents surged by 180% in February 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, coinciding with the attack on Change Healthcare and other healthcare providers 

• Engineering and Construction remained a consistent target for cyberattacks in the first half of both 2023 and 2024 with the United States bearing the brunt of cyberattacks in the first half of 2024, experiencing a staggering 46.15% increase compared to 2023 

• Technology Critical Start found a 12.75% decrease (from H1 2023) in database leaks and ransomware attacks targeting technology companies.  

“The first half of 2024 has painted a concerning picture of the ransomware threat landscape. We are continuing to observe a surge in ransomware and database leak activities,” said Callie Guenther, Senior Manager of Cyber Threat Research at Critical Start. “With bad actors becoming more sophisticated, it is vital for organizations to have a strong security culture and strategy in place. Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions that integrate asset inventory, endpoint controls security coverage, and MITRE ATT&CK^® Mitigations, help organizations proactively mitigate risk, leading to a reduced attack surface and a more resilient security infrastructure.” 

The report also highlights trending concerns for businesses, including:  

• Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks: Previously focused on large corporations, BEC scammers are now targeting smaller, less cybersecurity-conscious businesses 

• Deepfakes and Social Engineering: Findings show a surge in deepfake attacks, with an exponential 3,000% increase in deepfake fraud attempts  

• Abuse of Open-Source Repositories: Attackers are increasingly using these repositories to launch two main types of attacks: repo confusion attacks and supply chain attacks 

As a part of the Critical Start Cyber Research Unit (CRU), Critical Start Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) continuously monitors emerging threat developments and exploited vulnerabilities while collaborating with the Security Operations Center (SOC) teams to implement new detections that reduce the risk of a breach by expanding MITRE ATT&CK threat coverage for our customers. For future updates on emerging threats, follow the Critical Start Intelligence Hub. 

About Critical Start 

Organizations today face the challenge of optimally aligning their cyber protection measures to reduce the risk of breaches and business disruptions. CRITICALSTART^® Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is the foundation to Managed Cyber Risk Reduction, which improves security operations outcomes and minimizes the probability and impact of breaches. Utilizing their Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, they integrate industry-leading tools and proactive cybersecurity intelligence into the Security Operations Center (SOC) — such as comprehensive asset inventories, EDR coverage gaps, asset criticality, MITRE ATT&CK^® Mitigations, and vulnerability management. Their security operations team evaluates and responds to threats, vulnerabilities, and risks, while conducting extensive threat intelligence research. Supported by a human-led risk and security operations team with over 10 years of MDR experience, Critical Start empowers businesses to protect their critical assets, demonstrating a measurable return on investment. 

The platform offers maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and robust response capabilities. This approach ensures that organizations achieve optimal cyber risk reduction for every dollar spent, enabling them to confidently reach their desired risk tolerance levels. 

For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, @CRITICALSTART, or on Twitter, @CRITICALSTART.  

Report examines market trends in cyber risk, where organizations of various sizes see their risks, and how those organizations are working to mitigate risks 

PLANO, TX, August 5, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leader in Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), published its second annual Critical Start Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report, which examines why cyber risk mitigation continues to be a challenge for organizations. The study, conducted in partnership with research consultancy, Censuswide, uncovered that 86% of respondents shared that unknown organizational cyber risks, are currently a top concern. This is an increase of 17% compared to last year signifying a need to advance proactive cyber risk management practices in addition to threat based detection and response within security programs.  

Today’s increasingly complex and pervasive cyber threat landscape requires businesses to implement more robust and proactive cybersecurity measures yet concern around lack of company alignment and visibility persist. In fact, Critical Start’s report found that 66% of businesses report limited visibility and insight into their cyber risk profiles and 65% of executives expressed concerns over misalignment between cybersecurity investments and the organization’s risk reduction priorities. These findings are comparable to last year’s, 66% and 61% respectively, indicating that organization’s cyber risk management protocols haven’t improved. 

“Threat detection and response is essential for organizations, as this represents the final line of defense before attacks escalate into significant breaches or cause major business disruption”, says Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start. “Based on our research, 99.4% of cyber leaders want to combine proactive security elements into their detect and response capabilities. By incorporating capabilities such as finding hidden assets, endpoint coverage gaps, and failed log ingestion, organizations can improve security operations outcomes.  

The Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report also found: 

• Cyber attacks are not slowing down: 83% of cybersecurity professionals reported experiencing a cyber breach requiring attention, despite having traditional threat-based detect and respond security measures, a significant increase from previous years. 

• Cyber expertise is a growing issue: In 2023 we reported that 37% of cybersecurity professionals cited a lack of expertise as a challenge faced in effective cyber risk management. This year, that number increased to 50%.  

• Businesses seeking support to become more proactive: 99% of respondents say they plan to implement a managed cyber risk reduction (MCRR) solution to continuously monitor and mitigate cyber risks. 99% of these same organizations are planning to offload segments of cyber risk reduction projects to security providers, which is an increase of 8% compared to 2023. 

• Proactive risk reduction, the new normal: The report found that 81% of organizations are planning to prioritize proactive risk reduction strategies to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape. This includes continuous risk monitoring, threat intelligence integration, and timely incident response. 

Critical Start’s report highlights the need for businesses to advance proactive cybersecurity strategies. By leveraging MDR services that integrate proactive security measures, organizations can significantly reduce their cyber risk and enhance their overall security posture. Investment in cybersecurity technology, coupled with the invaluable expertise of human analysts, is essential for navigating the complex and dynamic cyber threat landscape. 

For more report findings and recommendations on implementing a proactive cyber risk mitigation strategy, download the full Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report here. 

About Critical Start 

Organizations today face the challenge of optimally aligning their cyber protection measures to reduce the risk of breaches and business disruptions. CRITICALSTART^® Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is the foundation to Managed Cyber Risk Reduction, which improves security operations outcomes and minimizes the probability and impact of breaches. Utilizing their Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, they integrate industry-leading tools and proactive cybersecurity intelligence into the Security Operations Center (SOC) — such as comprehensive asset inventories, EDR coverage gaps, asset criticality, MITRE ATT&CK^® Mitigations, and vulnerability management. Their security operations team evaluates and responds to threats, vulnerabilities, and risks, while conducting extensive threat intelligence research. Supported by a human-led risk and security operations team with over 10 years of MDR experience, Critical Start empowers businesses to protect their critical assets, demonstrating a measurable return on investment. 

The platform offers maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and robust response capabilities. This approach ensures that organizations achieve optimal cyber risk reduction for every dollar spent, enabling them to confidently reach their desired risk tolerance levels. 

For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, @CRITICALSTART, or on Twitter, @CRITICALSTART.  

Research for the Critical Start 2024 Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report was conducted by Censuswide via a survey of 1001 VP+ cybersecurity professionals, conducted over a specified period. The participant demographics covered a diverse range of industries, ensuring a comprehensive view of the cybersecurity landscape. 

PLANO, TX, May 15, 2024 – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), was recently named a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Emerging Worldwide MDR Services (doc #US50101523, April 2024). 

Critical Start’s MDR service empowers clients to maximize their current security investments by seamlessly integrating with top EDR and XDR solutions providers such as Microsoft Defender XDR suite, CrowdStrike Falcon, and SentinelOne, among others and can be based on the customers’ platform of choice, for example, Microsoft Sentinel or Splunk – fully managed by Critical Start. Critical Start’s MDR services are built on their proprietary Cyber Operations Risk and Response™ platform, providing security posture monitoring, management, and response orchestration for security analytics and cross-technology response. 

“Customers welcome Critical Start’s hands-on approach when supporting the entire life cycle of detecting and responding to incidents,” says Yogesh Shivhare, Research Manager, Security and Infrastructure, IDC. “Critical Start’s in-house DFIR capabilities support the entire life cycle of incident response, covering digital forensic investigations, evidence seizure, chain of custody, and secure storage. When customers include the asset visibility and risk assessment essentials add-ons with the MDR service, they gain added value through the cyber-risk dashboard and risk-ranked recommendations.” 

The IDC MarketScape noted, “Critical Start’s MDR customers highly appreciate the user-friendly nature and reporting capabilities of its customer portal. A key feature is the API access, which allows users to extract security data for peer benchmarking, productivity analysis, and visualization of security posture trends over time.” Additionally, the report highlighted that, “Critical Start’s MDR services are supported by a 60-minute or less median time to respond (MTRR) service-level agreement for all alert priorities, enhancing customer confidence in the effectiveness of its MDR offering.” 

“We believe being recognized as a Major Player in Emerging MDR Services by the IDC MarketScape is further validation that we deliver a platform that not only meets and exceeds the cybersecurity needs of our customers, and still the only provider delivering contractual SLAs for 10-minute MDR Critical Alert Notifications and 60-minute MDR MTTR,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “After the research for the IDC MarketScape report was conducted, we have accelerated our product innovation to help customers reduce their cyber risk outside of traditional MDR services including announcements for Vulnerability Prioritization, Asset Inventory Visibility, MDR for Operational Technology (OT), Risk Assessments (including NIST CSF 2.0), and Cyber Risk Register.”  

The assessment evaluated 12 emerging MDR service providers with worldwide operations, a revenue of $20 million to $60 million in 2021 and their current capabilities as well as future strategies for delivering MDR services. 

Read an excerpt of the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Emerging Managed Detection and Response Services 2024 Vendor Assessment, here. 

About IDC MarketScape 

IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors. 

About Critical Start    

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.    

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.    

PLANO,TX, May 14, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced that five of its channel leaders have been named to CRN’s Women of the Channel List for 2024: Allie Stevens, senior director of channel and field Marketing, Meredith Dishman, director of channels, Kate Darby, channel and field marketing manager, Katie Pollaro, senior channel marketing manager, and Victoria Milligan, channel and field marketing manager – East. 

This annual list by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, honors outstanding women from vendor, distributor and solution provider organizations whose remarkable contributions and leadership have made a significant impact on the technology industry. The inclusion of these accomplished female executives further demonstrates Critical Start’s commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech community.   

“We are honored to have multiple female leaders named to CRN’s Women of the Channel list for 2024 as it serves as a testament to the hard work and innovation these women bring to Critical Start and our customers,” said Rob Davis, CEO, and founder of Critical Start. “It is vital that we never stop celebrating these individuals whose dedication and innovative thinking is driving industry growth.”    

Stevens manages a team of professionals who define Critical Start’s channel and field marketing strategy across North America. Over the past year, she has helped advance the company’s channel business by crafting and implementing a robust Partner Journey framework for their channel marketing programs. 

Dishman holds responsibility for channel activities as the Director of Channels, South Central, at Critical Start. With over 17 years of experience, she has honed her expertise in cybersecurity distribution, culminating in her pivotal role at Critical Start since 2021. Meredith focuses on nurturing and empowering channel partners across the South-Central US market, ensuring sustained growth and success. 

Darby plays a key role in shaping the company’s channel strategy and uses marketing activities to connect with potential customers, aiming to impact the pipeline and boost revenue. She collaborated with Critical Start’s focus partners, driving the creation and execution of targeted marketing plans for the central region, and through her efforts, they have successfully cultivated new business and established impactful connections with clients. 

Pollaro is a seasoned marketing and channel professional and is instrumental in shaping marketing strategies aimed at boosting partner mindshare and engagement to drive pipeline growth. She has led the transformation of Critical Start’s partner portal, emphasizing strategic thinking and a focus on improving the user experience. Her work fosters collaboration among diverse teams and engages external stakeholders. 

Milligan is responsible for the market strategy for the Eastern region including all of Canada, with her goals being to increase brand awareness, create events with Critical Start’s partner community along with company hosted events to increase pipeline and customer opportunities. This year, she has managed the way prospects see and understand Critical Start by organizing and running over 25 unique events. 

The honorees of CRN’s 2024 Women of the Channel list bring a wealth of creativity, strategic thinking, and leadership to their respective roles and responsibilities. Whether in vendor, distributor, or solution provider organizations, these exceptional women are using their unique talents to drive success for their partners and customers. CRN’s recognition of these outstanding leaders is a testament to their unwavering dedication and commitment to achieving channel excellence and their vital contributions to the technology industry.  

The 2024 Women of the Channel list will be featured in the June issue of CRN Magazine, with online coverage starting May 13 at crn.com/wotc. 

About Critical Start 

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance. 

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram. 

About The Channel Company 

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end-users. Backed by over 40 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com  

Follow The Channel Company: X and LinkedIn 

PLANO, TX, May 8, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced the expansion of the frameworks available in its Risk Assessments offering. These additions to the tool expand upon the initial offering, providing additional framework-based assessments for customers to achieve data-driven evaluation, articulation, and monitoring their overall cyber risk posture. This expansion provides security leaders with more ways to identify gaps, demonstrate progress toward security maturity, rationalize investments, and most importantly, strengthen cyber defenses.​ Critical Start Risk Assessments also include peer benchmarking for selected Frameworks like NIST CSF and CIS Critical Security Controls, which provides customers with vital intelligence regarding how their security program compares with like organizations. 

In this release, Critical Start adds supports NIST CSF 2.0, CIS Critical Security Controls v8, and NIST SP 800-171, broadening support for framework updates and additional frameworks giving more options for organizations to measure their security maturity and utilize Critical Start recommendations to further improve their security programs to reduce cyber risk. For all available frameworks, users can securely attach documents to any question in the assessment as evidence and export an audit package of completed assessment with attachments to provide to third-party auditors. 

With these new frameworks, all Risk Assessments Essentials customers gain immediate access to new templates at no additional cost. Customers also have access to data from completed assessments which will automatically crosswalk between framework templates.  For example, if a user has completed a NIST CSF 2.0 assessment and wants to start a CIS Critical Security Controls v8 assessment, existing data from their previous assessments will pre-populate where the fields match. This powerful feature enables security and governance teams to eliminate redundant work efforts and quickly pivot based on emerging organizational requirements.  

“Risk assessments are the first and best step for organizations to measure their current risk posture and identify the immediate improvements they can implement to reduce their cyber risk,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “The Critical Start Risk Assessments offering has been designed for organizations of all sizes to quickly and easily assess themselves and to prepare for third-party audits with no limit on the different frameworks or how many times a framework is used for an assessment.” 

Additional benefits of Critical Start’s expanded Risk Assessments include: 

• Assessment Import where new customers can import data from spreadsheet or paper-based assessments to continue building upon previous work 
• Added and updated frameworks where Critical Start continuously adds/updates frameworks in the Risk Assessments platform to keep customers ahead of new regulatory and audit requirements 
• Repeat Assessments where customers will have the ability to take or retake assessments as often as they need without incurring any additional costs so they can continually track security improvements 
• Risk-Ranked Recommendations that give prescriptive next steps that customers can take to reduce risk 

Multi-level framework assessment reports and dashboards provide deep insights into point-in-time and trend data, and artifacts of internally completed assessments can be shared with external auditors, ultimately reducing the time and cost of external audits. 

For more information on Critical Start expanded Risk Assessments, visit: Risk Assessments – Critical Start, or stop by Booth #449 South at RSAC for more details and a demo. 

 About Critical Start  

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART^®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.  

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.  

PLANO, TX, May 7, 2024– Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced the launch of its new, free Quick Start Risk Assessments designed to help organizations better understand their security maturity which includes the capability to monitor an organization’s cyber risk mitigation effectiveness over time.. The 15-question guided survey, maps to 75% of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF 2.0), evaluates the security maturity of an organization, provides peer benchmarking, and delivers actionable insights through dashboards and reports. 

Many organizations today lack visibility into how their cyber maturity compares to industry standards and their maturity to peer organizations. They struggle to objectively determine if their security program is as effective as it should be at mitigating cyber risk. According to Critical Start’s 2023 Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report, 66% of organizations are facing challenges with visibility and insight into their cyber risk posture, with the vast majority seeking help to reduce their cyber risk.  Quick Start Risk Assessments help address these challenges by delivering risk dashboarding, monitoring, mitigation recommendations, security maturity measurement against expected levels, and evaluating posture against industry standards.  

“Through our customers, we understand the inherent challenge security leaders face in gauging the effectiveness of their security programs. Evaluating one’s security posture is a complex task, and often, the true measure lies in comparison with similar organizations,” 

said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start.  Our Quick Start Risk Assessments offer a free solution, providing actionable information and recommendations within minutes. By benchmarking against peers, security professionals can swiftly ascertain the robustness of their risk management readiness, empowering them to fortify their security strategies with confidence.” 

Critical Start Quick Start Risk Assessments are available free to both Critical Start customers and non-customers, with no limit to the number of times assessments can be taken. The assessments compare security maturity to over 1,000 organizations across more than a dozen industries, offering critical comparative data that helps validate security maturity and justify budget requests. Organizations that take the assessments multiple times can set target states, compare to peer levels, and visually track security improvements over time. 

Quick Start Risk Assessments is released in conjunction with Critical Start’s appearance at RSA Conference (South Hall, Booth #449) where the company will be enabling attendees to try it and see peer benchmarks.  

To learn more about Critical Start Quick Start Risk Assessments visit: https://www.criticalstart.com/quick-start-sign-up/. 

About Critical Start 

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.  

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram. 

PLANO, TX, May 6, 2024 – Today at RSA Conference, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), is thrilled to announce that it has been honored as a Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM) Global Infosec Award winner in Best Product Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR) and Hot Company Managed Detection and Response (MDR). Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start, also garnered recognition as Publisher’s Choice Chief Technology Officer. The CDM Global InfoSec Awards honor information security innovators who provide unique and compelling products and services.

In today’s turbulent cyber threat environment, Critical Start disrupts the security space with a complete portfolio of services designed to reduce and mitigate risk exposure. The company’s MDR service provides 24x7x365 threat monitoring, investigation, and response across customers’ endpoints, network, identities, cloud workloads, and applications that simplify the critical elements of cybersecurity for an organization. Critical Start’s MCRR solutions go beyond reactive threat-based detect and response measures to support organizational security programs across all six functions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF 2.0).

“Critical Start embodies three major features we judges look for to become winners: understanding tomorrow’s threats, today, providing a cost-effective solution and innovating in unexpected ways that can help mitigate cyber risk and get one step ahead of the next breach,” said Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher of Cyber Defense Magazine.

“In the face of rapidly evolving cyberattacks, organizations urgently need to adopt innovative, holistic, and proactive strategies to mitigate cybersecurity risks,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “We are honored to receive these awards from Cyber Defense Magazine in recognition of our commitment to providing leading-edge services and technology to address those needs. I’d also like to extend a huge congratulations to Critical Start’s CTO, Randy Watkins, for his recognition in this year’s awards as Publisher’s Choice Chief Technology Officer – we couldn’t agree more that he is well-deserving of this accolade.”

Winners of the Global InfoSec Awards will be celebrated at the 2024 RSA conference beginning on May 6. The complete list of winners can be found at http://www.cyberdefenseawards.com/.

For more information on the Critical Start product suite, visit the link here or visit the Critical Start team at RSAC 2024 at Booth #449.

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

About CDM InfoSec Awards

This is Cyber Defense Magazine’s twelfth year of honoring InfoSec innovators from around the Globe. Our submission requirements are for any startup, early stage, later stage, or public companies in the INFORMATION SECURITY (INFOSEC) space who believe they have a unique and compelling value proposition for their product or service. Learn more at www.cyberdefenseawards.com

About the Judging 

The judges are CISSP, FMDHS, CEH, certified security professionals who voted based on their independent review of the company submitted materials on the website of each submission including but not limited to data sheets, white papers, product literature and other market variables. CDM has a flexible philosophy to find more innovative players with new and unique technologies, than the one with the most customers or money in the bank. CDM is always asking “What’s Next?” so we are looking for best of breed, next generation InfoSec solutions.

About Cyber Defense Magazine

Cyber Defense Magazine is the premier source of cyber security news and information for InfoSec professionals in business and government. We are managed and published by and for ethical, honest, passionate information security professionals. Our mission is to share cutting-edge knowledge, real-world stories and awards on the best ideas, products, and services in the information technology industry.  We deliver electronic magazines every month online for free, and special editions exclusively for the RSA Conferences. CDM is a proud member of the Cyber Defense Media Group. Learn more about us at https://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com and visit https://www.cyberdefensetv.com and https://www.cyberdefenseradio.com to see and hear some of the most informative interviews of many of these winning company executives.  Join a webinar at https://www.cyberdefensewebinars.com and realize that infosec knowledge is power.

PLANO, TX, April 24, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced the upcoming availability of Critical Start Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services for Operational Technology (OT). A critical area of risk for industrial organizations, OT is another component of Critical Start’s Managed Cyber Risk Reduction strategy. MCRR combines threat, vulnerability, and risk monitoring and management so organizations can have a strategic, data-driven, risk-based approach to their security program. 

Critical Start MDR for OT is a comprehensive and flexible service that combines OT-specific threat detection capabilities with the ability to leverage a customer’s existing infrastructure and tools by ingesting security-relevant logs to address the unique challenges faced by industrial organizations. Dedicated OT security tools like Dragos, Claroty, Nozomi, etc. are supported but not a prerequisite for this service. 

With threat actors constantly upping their tactics against industrial organizations, cyber incidents against these organizations and their OT environments have become increasingly common. As a result, there is a growing necessity for comprehensive security monitoring and threat detection solutions that provide increased visibility into these environments. Unfortunately, many organizations lack the resources, tools, and personnel to effectively monitor and detect threats within their OT environments and industrial operations around the clock. 

Critical Start MDR for OT aims to address these challenges by providing predictable, flat-rate pricing for 24x7x365 threat monitoring, detection, and response, enabling industrial organizations to reduce financial and operational risks targeting their environments, whether through unintended operational changes, cyberattacks against OT systems directly, or attacks originating from the IT network that impact the OT environment. Environment-specific rules of engagement define what level and type of response is performed by Critical Start Risk & Security Operations Center (RSOC) personnel to further ensure the integrity of industrial operations. 

Additionally, the Critical Start Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform will provide visibility and threat detection across both IT and OT environments, reducing the burden on internal teams by addressing the growing complexity of managing and securing IT/OT environments.  

 Additional benefits of Critical Start MDR for OT include: 

• Immediate visibility and risk reduction – enabling organizations with or without dedicated OT security tools to gain visibility and reduce risk quickly and at a reasonable cost to start and accelerate their OT security journey 
• Scalable and adaptable solution that grows with the organization’s OT security needs – future-proofing an organization’s MDR investment by allowing them to add monitoring support for dedicated OT security tools if and when they are added in the future 
• End-to-end visibility for IT/OT convergence – by offering both MDR for OT and IT, Critical Start offers unique, end-to-end visibility, providing enhanced visibility and threat detection for IT/OT convergence in a single platform 
• Tailored rules of engagement and product integrations – the platform defines separate Rules of Engagement and product integrations for IT and OT environments, ensuring that customers can trust Critical Start not to take response actions that could negatively impact their operational environments, such as isolating a host, without proper authorization and validation 
• Overcoming barriers to OT security monitoring – Critical Start MDR for OT helps organizations overcome these barriers by providing a cost-effective, flexible solution that can be implemented quickly and scaled over time. This allows them to improve their OT security posture without significant upfront investments. 

For more information on Critical Start MDR for OT, visit: https://www.criticalstart.com/our-solutions/managed-detection-response-services/operational-technology/, or stop by Booth #449 South at RSAC for more details and a demo. 

About Critical Start   

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART^®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.   

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.   

Plano, TX, March 14, 2024 –  Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), today announced it has won Bronze in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category for the 2024 Globee® Cybersecurity Awards.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, security and risk leaders are prioritizing focus on proactive, versus reactive security strategies, turning to their managed security service partners to help them pick up where their current risk management approaches are falling short. As a result, Critical Start introduced Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), which represents the next evolution of MDR. MCRR integrates cyber risk monitoring technology with a human-led risk and security operations team. The technology is designed to go beyond detection and response to support all five functions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF).

The combined solution provides organizations with a comprehensive understanding of their cybersecurity posture along with real-time monitoring and response to cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and risks. The power of MCRR provides numerous benefits and advantages to organizations who care about reducing cyber risk and are looking to move beyond threat-based MDR services to a proven, cost-effective, guided, and measurable risk-based approach to improve security posture.

“Enterprises have an expansive number of MDR providers to choose from, each with various offerings and capabilities,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “Receiving the recognition validates Critical Start as a leading MDR solution in such a competitive market and showcases our commitment to continuously enhance our solution to meet our current and future clients’ needs.”

The Globee Cybersecurity Awards spotlights the achievements of companies and individuals excelling in risk management, threat detection, cloud security, data privacy, and beyond.  By spotlighting the latest in cutting-edge technologies and innovative strategies, these awards showcase the transformative impact on the digital security landscape, inspiring continuous advancements and setting new benchmarks for excellence.

“Congratulations to the 2024 victors for their pivotal role in fortifying our digital world.” said San Madan, President of Globee Awards. “Your dedication and ingenuity not only contribute to advancing cybersecurity but also inspire the community to strive for excellence. We’re honored to celebrate your success.”

The judging panel, comprising more than 580 experts from around the world, highlights the award’s prestige and the exceptional quality of the winners. You can find the full list of this year’s winners at: https://globeeawards.com/cybersecurity/winners/

About the Globee Awards 

Globee Awards are conferred in nine programs and competitions: the Globee® Awards for American Business, Globee® Awards for Business, Globee® Awards for Customer Excellence, Globee® Awards for Cybersecurity, Globee® Awards for Disruptors, Golden Bridge Awards®, Globee® Awards for Leadership, Globee® Awards for Technology, and the Globee® Awards for Women In Business. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

Plano, TX, March 12, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced strong business growth at the conclusion of its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2024. The company saw an Average Annual Return (AAR) of around 30% this year and credits the growth to including cyber risk as a focus on top of their core MDR business.  

Forrester and Critical Start’s Managed Cyber Risk Reduction Opportunity Snapshot found that 81% of enterprises have an inadequate approach to cyber risk management, highlighting a necessary shift on how businesses think about proactive cybersecurity protection. Last year, the company released several reports including the Cyber Risk Confidence Index, Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report, and biannual Threat Intelligence Reports, leveraging the findings to make informed decisions on product and business updates to continue meeting industry demands.   

In 2023, Critical Start advanced its company strategy by unveiling MCRR, the next evolution of MDR and a groundbreaking new approach to security that goes beyond threat-based detection and response to support organizational security programs across the six Functions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF):  Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover. Critical Start launched the following offerings as part of its MCRR strategy and supporting a proactive approach to cybersecurity: 

• Asset Visibility: Helps customers become more proactive within their security program by empowering them to uncover assets that need protection, validate that expected security controls are in place and working, and identify areas of risk exposure due to gaps in security coverage.  
• Critical Start Risk Assessment: Aligns risk assessments to industry frameworks, benchmarks against peers, and stack-ranks recommendations for improvement. The solution provides enterprises with visibility and insight into their risk posture against similar organizations, with the ability to measure security maturity against expected levels and receive data-driven insights to prioritize next steps toward improved security.  
• Quick Start Risk Assessments: With similar capabilities to the Risk Assessment solution, later this spring, Critical Start will launch Quick Start Risk Assessments. The free service includes a 15-question guided survey, maps to 75% of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF 2.0), provides peer benchmarking, and delivers actionable insights through dashboards and reports. 

Prior to Critical Start’s MCRR launch and corresponding solutions, the company launched its Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR) offering and announced the upcoming release of its risk-based Vulnerability Prioritization offering, which is designed to address many of the challenges security leaders face with their vulnerability management programs. The company also expanded partnerships with industry-leading companies Sumo Logic® and Lenovo™. 

“Amid a turbulent, yet innovative year in cybersecurity, Critical Start has continuously proven it’s a major industry player and at the forefront of trends and transformation,” said Rob Davis, CEO of Critical Start. “Our impressive insight into the needs of our customers and evolving demands within cybersecurity has pushed us to carve out an entirely new industry category, ultimately changing the way organizations approach and mitigate cyber risk.” 

Critical Start has been the recipient of numerous industry accolades and awards this past year, including: 

• Named a Best Place to Work and Best Midsize Place to Work in Dallas, Texas 2024 by Built In’s Best Places to Work Awards  
• Selected to participate in Microsoft’s Security Copilot Partner Private Preview 
• Winner of “Most Innovative Managed Detection and Response” category in Cyber Defense Magazine’s Top InfoSec Innovators Awards 
• Winner of Cyber Defense Magazine’s 2023 Global Infosec Award for “Next Gen Managed Detection and Response (MDR)” category 

To support strong growth, the company is excited to announce numerous leadership investments, including the appointment of Rich Scott to Chief Revenue Officer and the promotion of Jamie Slattery to Senior Vice President of Engineering. 

Scott brings over 19 years of sales and executive experience, previously holding CRO positions as Sontiq and Xcitium. At Critical Start, Scott oversees strategic channel initiatives and account plans with solution provider and reseller partners to drive growth for the company’s Managed Cyber Risk Reduction and Managed Detection and Response subscription services. 

In addition to numerous product launches and industry award wins, the company expanded its footprint with teams in Canada, and established another state-of-the-art Security Operations Center (SOC) in Lehi, Utah. 

For more information about Critical Start, MCRR and the company’s solutions, please visit: criticalstart.com 

ABOUT CRITICAL START 

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance. 

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram. 

Contact:   

Abigail Dellapina 

[email protected]

Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced that CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, named Dwayne Myers, VP of Channels and Alliances, a 2024 Channel Chief as part of the distinguished 2024 CRN® Channel Chiefs list.

With more than two decades of experience in channel development, sales strategy, and business operations for both manufacturing and channel partners, Myers has worked tirelessly to help corporations of all sizes develop channel involvement and program efficacy. As a three-time Channel Chief honoree, he continues to lead his organization’s productive and enduring channel program. 

“In the current landscape, organizations are actively seeking cost-effective solutions to mitigate the risk of breaches,” stated Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. ” By teaming up with our trusted advisor channel partners, Critical Start instills more confidence in preventing breaches and minimizing business disruptions for our joint customers.” 

Throughout the past year, Critical Start has prioritized developing its channel program, and recently announced the general availability of their Risk Assessment and Peer Benchmarking solution, and Asset Visibility offering, further supporting Critical Start’s Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR) approach to security. MCRR, the next evolution of MDR, provides a comprehensive managed solution to address risks, vulnerabilities, and threats. Combined with over 12 years of award-winning MDR services, MCRR enables organizations to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance. 

The 2024 CRN Channel Chiefs are selected by the editorial staff based on their record of business innovation and dedication to the partner community. This year’s list represents the top IT executives responsible for building a robust channel ecosystem. 

“These channel evangelists are dedicated to supporting solution providers and achieving growth by implementing robust partner programs and unique business strategies,” said Jennifer Follett, VP, US Content, and Executive Editor, CRN, at The Channel Company. “Their efforts are instrumental in helping partners bring essential solutions to market. The Channel Company is pleased to acknowledge these prominent channel leaders and looks forward to chronicling their achievements throughout the year.” 

The 2024 CRN Channel Chiefs list will be featured in the February 2024 issue of CRN Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/ChannelChiefs. 

About The Channel Company 

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by more than 40 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com 

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. 

© 2024. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

Contact:
Gabriella Troiani
[email protected]

PLANO, TX, January 23, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced it is among the Best Places to Work and Best Midsize Places to Work in Dallas, Texas by Built In’s Best Places to Work Awards. The annual awards program includes companies of all sizes, from startups to those in the enterprise, and honors both remote-first employers as well as companies in large tech markets across the U.S.

“It is always an honor to be recognized for the culture and benefits we offer at Critical Start,” says Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “This award reaffirms our commitment to creating an environment where our team feels valued, empowered, and inspired to drive innovation in cybersecurity. We owe this recognition to our incredible team whose dedication and passion drive our success.”
Built In determines the winners of Best Places to Work based on an algorithm, using company data about compensation and benefits. To reflect the benefits candidates are searching for more frequently on Built In, the program also weighs criteria like remote and flexible work opportunities, programs for DEI and other people-first cultural offerings.

“I’d like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to the 2024 Best Places to Work winners,” says Maria Christopoulos Katris. “I am truly inspired by these companies that have risen to the challenge of fostering a positive work environment, maintaining a strong brand, and ensuring employee satisfaction. The future is filled with promise, and we are so excited to see what lies ahead.”

ABOUT BUILT IN

Built In is creating the largest candidate generation platform for technology professionals globally. Monthly, millions of the industry’s most in-demand professionals visit the site from across the world. They rely on our platform to stay ahead of tech trends and news, learn skills to accelerate their careers and find opportunities at companies whose values they share. Built In also serves thousands of innovative companies from startups to the Fortune 500. By putting their stories in front of our uniquely engaged audience, we help them reach otherwise hard-to-hire tech professionals. www.builtin.com.

ABOUT BUILT IN’S BEST PLACES TO WORK

Built In’s annual Best Places to Work program honors companies with the best total rewards packages across the U.S. and in the following tech hubs: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Colorado, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. Best Places to Work is distinct because its algorithm selects tech companies that build their offerings specifically around what tech professionals value in a workplace. Winners are announced in early January 2024. https://employers.builtin.com/best-places-to-work.

ABOUT CRITICAL START

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

Contact:
Gabriella Troiani
[email protected]

PLANO, TX, Jan. 11, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced general availability of Critical Start Risk Assessments, which automatically aligns risk assessments to industry frameworks, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), benchmarks against peers, and stack-ranks recommendations for improvement. Critical Start Risk Assessments provide organizations with visibility and insight into their risk posture against similar organizations, with the ability to measure security maturity against expected levels and receive data-driven insights to prioritize next steps toward improved security.

According to Critical Start’s 2023 Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report, 61% of security leaders are concerned about the misalignment between cybersecurity investments and their organization’s risk reduction priorities. These leaders know there must be a better way to derive insights from risk assessments to validate and prioritize investments for maximum impact. Most risk assessments are pen-and-paper or spreadsheet exercises that are prone to human error, omissions, and subjectivity. These assessments quickly result in data overwhelm with few, if any, deep insights delivered without significant time and expertise spent on analysis. Critical Start’s Risk Assessments go beyond solving those challenges to provide true alignment between risk reduction and cybersecurity investment.

“Critical Start Risk Assessments are based on proven, industry-standard frameworks and assessment results are quantifiably compared to a continuing set of peer benchmarks. This lets security leaders drive prioritized improvement decisions with evidence-based data. It’s a powerful data-driven decisioning they’ll gain, and one they’ve not had before, where they can justify budget requests and demonstrate quantifiable proof of the effectiveness of their security program investments,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start.

The key benefits of Critical Start Risk Assessments include:

• Easy-to-use web interface to execute and manage framework-based assessments, with no limits to the number of users or assessments that can be taken or re-taken.
• Ability to import existing assessments to gain greater insights and build upon previous work.
• Attach evidence of compliance or attainment to each assessment questionnaire.
• Visual tracking of security improvements over time.
• Industry peer benchmarking and security maturity comparison to more than 1,000 organizations across more than a dozen industries.
• Easy-to-follow, ranked, and justified recommendations for making immediate improvements. 
• Continual reassessment to show progress and keep ahead of changing frameworks, standards, and peer organization advancements.
• Accelerated external audit readiness by comparing Critical Start assessment results against existing baselines.
• Track the lifecycle of each assessment including reviewers, approvers, due dates, and overdue status. 
• Optional Professional Services to assist with the interviewing, evidence collection, data entry, analysis, reporting, and recommendations.

For more information on Critical Start Risk Assessments, visit: https://www.criticalstart.com/our-solutions/risk-assessments/

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

PLANO, TX, January 9, 2024 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced the general availability of their Asset Visibility offering. As part of an MCRR strategy, Asset Visibility helps customers become more proactive within their security program, helping them uncover assets that need protection, validate that the expected endpoint security controls are in place and working, and identify areas of risk exposure due to gaps in security coverage.  

Businesses today face increasing challenges with managing cyber risk, maximizing current technology, and optimizing costs. Compounding these challenges, security leaders are tasked with safeguarding their organization by doing more with less. According to Critical Start’s 2023 Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report, 90% of organizations lack the time to continuously monitor security posture and identify potential areas of control failure, hindering their ability to understand their level of risk exposure.  

Critical Start is committed to doing what’s best for its customers and helping security teams overcome these challenges. Since MDR solutions are only as good as the security signals they receive, endpoint security coverage monitoring is a must-have for organizations that prioritize risk, which is why Critical Start has taken the unique step of including Endpoint Security Coverage Gaps, a component of its new Asset Visibility offering, as standard within its MDR service at no extra charge. By revealing endpoint security coverage gaps, weaknesses in attack surfaces can be mitigated to ensure the SOC receives the expected signals for threat identification and containment. 

For customers needing enhanced asset visibility and management capabilities beyond Endpoint Security Coverage Gaps, Critical Start offers Asset Visibility as a standalone module that can be used with or without existing MDR services. Asset Visibility is one of several data sources that feed into Critical Start’s Risk-Ranked Reduction Recommendations component of our Cyber Risk Dashboard, which analyzes a customer’s security posture and risk exposure to suggest the next best action to take to reduce the most risk and empowers security leaders with data-driven insights on optimizing their security programs and getting the most value from their cybersecurity investments.  

Based on their unique cyber risk management needs, businesses can choose which offer gives them the expanded visibility and tighter control of endpoint security coverage they need to protect their organization and keep ahead of risk. 

Included as Standard with Critical Start MDR 

• Endpoint Security Coverage Gaps: Highlights the level of risk exposure to the organization due to endpoint security coverage gaps by identifying previously unknown or unmanaged assets and allows for gap mitigation to reduce the possibility that a threat will be missed. 
• Asset Inventory: Customers can build a normalized asset inventory from their security and asset data sources for a consolidated view of assets across the IT estate. 

Additional Capabilities Offered with Asset Visibility 

Endpoint Security Coverage Gaps and Asset Inventory, plus: 

• Asset Criticality Ratings: Assets are tagged based on their importance to operations and data sensitivity, allowing customers to identify and prioritize remediation actions for the greatest impact to risk.  
• Unified Host Inventory: Building off the data from the asset inventory, it creates a single source of truth of assets, allowing customers to get rid of manual tracking processes, like Excel.  

• Data Administration and Management: Provides in-depth analysis and exclusion, reporting and exports, de-duplication and exclusion, end-of-life OS identification, trend analysis, search and filter capabilities, and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) augmentation via export, enabling security teams to keep pace with business changes and control their cyber risk exposure accordingly. 
• Self-service Integrations: Empowering customers to integrate and configure new products as needed facilitates rapid time-to-value by providing increased context for broader asset visibility and coverage gap information for continuous cyber risk reduction. 

“An MDR service with contractual SLAs is foundational to any organization detecting and responding to current threats and attacks. Increasingly, our customers have asked for a way to become more proactive in their approach to cybersecurity, and we have responded! We now offer a portfolio of MCRR services, which includes Asset Visibility—an important first step to risk reduction. It helps our customers understand the assets in their environment and if they are protected,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “We’ve added more value to our MDR offering by including proactive capabilities like Endpoint Security Coverage Gaps at no extra cost while giving customers needing enhanced visibility and management the option to add Asset Visibility services to their security program, all while remaining within the Critical Start ecosystem.”    

For more information on Critical Start Asset Visibility, visit: https://www.criticalstart.com/our-solutions/asset-visibility/. 

About Critical Start  

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.  

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.  

PLANO, TX, November 28, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced the kick-off of the Threat Protection Delivered Roadshow, a multi-city roadshow of workshops for security leaders conducted in partnership with Microsoft. Designed to showcase the full power of Microsoft Defender threat protection solutions alongside Critical Start’s Managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) service. Workshops will take place at Microsoft facilities throughout North America, and will feature Critical Start CTO, Randy Watkins, joined by security experts from Microsoft.

Many security teams today are frustrated by the litany of complexities associated with protecting their organizations in an increasingly sophisticated cyber threat environment. During the half-day sessions at local Microsoft offices throughout North America security leaders will learn how to:
• Maintain security coverage while transitioning to the Microsoft Security Suite to create a simplified and more effective security program.
• Leverage MXDR to combat alert fatigue while resolving every alert to reduce risk and prevent business disruption.
• Optimize threat protection operations using Microsoft XDR and SIEM capabilities with Critical Start’s MXDR services (and see a live demo of it in action).
• Apply the principles of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction to proactively improve threat protection while actively reducing cyber risk.

“The launch of Threat Protection Delivered roadshow underscores our commitment to providing security leaders with practical strategies to navigate the complexities of cybersecurity. Teaming up with Microsoft enables us to showcase the seamless integration of their powerful threat protection solutions with our MXDR service,” said Randy Watkins, CTO at Critical Start. “Together, we offer security teams the tools and insights needed to create effective, simplified, and proactive cybersecurity programs.”

The first stop on the Threat Protection Delivered roadshow takes place on Tuesday, November 28th at the Microsoft Technology Center in Denver, CO. A virtual roadshow is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, December 6th. For a full list of locations and dates, and/or to request to attend a workshop, click here.

About Critical Start
Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

PLANO, TX, November 15, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), announced its participation in the Microsoft Security Copilot Partner Private Preview. Critical Start was selected based on their proven experience with Microsoft Security technologies, willingness to explore and provide feedback on cutting-edge functionality, and close relationship with Microsoft.

“In the context of security, AI’s impact is likely to be profound, tilting the scales in favor of defenders and empowering organizations to defend at machine speed. At Microsoft, we are privileged to have a leading role in advancing AI innovation, and we are so grateful to our incredible ecosystem of partners, whose mission-driven work is critical to helping customers secure their organizations and confidently bring the many benefits of AI into their environments,” said Vasu Jakkal, CVP, Microsoft Security.

Critical Start is working with Microsoft product teams to help shape Security Copilot product development in several ways, including validation and refinement of new and upcoming scenarios, providing feedback on product development and operations to be incorporated in future product releases, and validation and feedback of APIs to assist with Security Copilot extensibility. To learn more, read the announcement.

“It is an honor to have been selected for the Microsoft Security Copilot Private Preview for Partners and have the opportunity to help shape the product’s development,” said Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start. “We are excited to leverage Security Copilot’s AI-driven capabilities in conjunction with our Cyber Operations Risk & Response platform to provide our customers a service that prevents breaches and combats cyber risk with greater speed and effectiveness while providing insights to make organizations more secure and resilient.”

Security Copilot is the first AI-powered security product that enables security professionals to respond to threats quickly, process signals at machine speed, and assess risk exposure in minutes. It combines an advanced large language model (LLM) with a security-specific model that is informed by Microsoft’s unique global threat intelligence and more than 65 trillion daily signals.

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

PLANO, TX, October 11, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR) solutions, published its biannual Cyber Threat Intelligence Report, leveraging research from its Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) team to highlight top cyber threats from the second half of 2023 and emerging cybersecurity trends impacting critical industries such as finance, education, manufacturing and state and local government (SLED).

Hackers have access to advanced, automated technologies that are enabling an unprecedented number of cyberattacks causing detrimental impact to organizations. Sixty-seven percent of organizations experienced a breach requiring attention within the last two years, despite having traditional threat-based security measures in place. By analyzing sources such as customer data, open-source intelligence, vulnerability research, and social media and dark web monitoring, Critical Start’s CTI team reveals key cyber threats disrupting businesses and highlights ways organizations can strengthen their security posture and proactively mitigate potential risk.

Key report findings include:

• Phishing attacks leveraging Quick Response (QR) codes are on the rise with bad actors masquerading as Microsoft security notifications with a QR code embedded inside a PNG image or a PDF attachment.
• Education remains one of the most susceptible industries to cyber-attacks, yet there is more diversity in the types of threats. Vulnerability exploitation accounted for 29% of attacks, while phishing campaigns constituted 30% of cyber incidents on K-12 schools in 2023.
• Several known ransomware groups are sharing tactics, techniques, and procedures at a granular level suggesting that threat actors are much more reliant on affiliates than previously thought and highlighting the complex and ever-changing nature of the cybercrime economy.
• Microsoft Teams allows external accounts to send potentially harmful files directly to an organization’s staff, increasing the risk of successful attacks by bypassing security measures and anti-phishing training.
• Volt Typhoon, a threat actor sponsored by the Chinese state, is likely to persist in carrying out cyber espionage campaigns to support the broader Chinese government agenda against U.S. critical infrastructure.

“The volume and sophistication of cyberattacks is continuously growing and evolving making it impossible for organizations to feel on-top of internal vulnerabilities and remain cognizant of every external threat,” said Callie Guenther, Senior Manager of Cyber Threat Research at Critical Start. “In an effort to democratize cyber threat intelligence, this report highlights the most prominent security-related issues plaguing business and how they can proactively reduce cyber risk.”

Critical Start’s H2 2023 Threat Intelligence Report can be found here.

As a part of the Critical Start Cyber Research Unit (CRU), Critical Start CTI continuously monitors emerging threat developments and vulnerabilities while collaborating with the Security Engineering and SOC teams to implement new detections that reduce the risk of a breach by expanding MITRE ATT&CK threat coverage for its customers. For future updates on emerging threats, follow the Critical Start Intelligence Hub.

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 8 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

New Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report explores unique security challenges confronting businesses today; reveals desire for new, holistic approach to risk mitigation

PLANO, TX, August 23, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, published its first-ever Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report, which explores major concerns and challenges currently confronting cybersecurity leaders as they manage risk within their organizations. The report also examines the amount of risk organizations are willing to accept, resource constraints, and key priorities for approaching cyber risk in the future. Results of the study, conducted in partnership with research consultancy, Censuswide, reveal businesses are struggling to understand their cyber risks, with 66% of respondents indicating that they have limited visibility and insight into their cyber risk profiles, hindering their ability to prioritize investments and allocate resources effectively.

Amidst an environment of ever-evolving cyber threats, there is a strong need to progress how the industry approaches reducing cybersecurity risk to facilitate better resource allocation during a period of staffing shortages and burnout. This is evident as 67% of organizations experienced a breach requiring attention within the last two years despite having traditional threat-based security measures in place. Further, 61% of security executives expressed concerns over the current misalignment between cybersecurity investments and their organization’s risk reduction priorities.

“Today, it’s not just about defending against threats; it’s also about acknowledging the full spectrum of potential risks and vulnerabilities as part of the cornerstone for modern business resilience,” said Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start. “As our research highlights, organizations are starting to think more holistically about their security programs to better safeguard against breaches and disruptions. They want to better align resources and projects to the greatest risk reduction impacts.”

Additional key findings from the Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report include:

• The cybersecurity landscape and what cyber leaders need is changing: 83% of organizations agree that a comprehensive, cyber risk reduction strategy will yield a reduction in the likelihood of a significant cyber incident occurring.
• Organizations are looking to be more proactive: 74% of organizations are planning to prioritize proactive risk reduction strategies to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape.
• Cyber teams are seeking help: 93% of organizations plan to offload specific segments of cyber risk reduction workstreams or projects to security service providers within the next two years.
• Organizations see a need for holistic cyber risk management solutions: 93% of organizations expressed the belief that a holistic, evidenced based approach to cyber risk management will yield a reduction in the likelihood of a significant cyber incident occurring. This includes integrating risk assessment, protection, detection, response, and recovery into a cohesive strategy.

The publishing of the Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report comes on the heels of Critical Start’s recent introduction of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), a groundbreaking new approach to security designed to reshape the way businesses combat cyber risks. MCRR, the next evolution of MDR, provides a comprehensive managed solution to address risks, vulnerabilities, and threats.  It’s built to go beyond threat-based detect and response to support organizational security programs across the five functions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF): Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.

For more report findings and recommendations on how security leaders can evolve their strategies to include MCRR and better align to industry-leading cybersecurity frameworks, download the full Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report HERE.

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART^®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 12 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance. 

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

Research for the Critical Start 2023 Cyber Risk Landscape Peer Report was conducted by Censuswide, via a survey of 501 U.S.-based IT security decision makers at businesses ranging from 2,500-25,000 employees. Censuswide abides by and employ members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles.

PLANO, TX, August 10, 2023— Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions and pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR) solutions, announced the upcoming release of its new Risk Assessment offering. The new offering provides organizations with tools to proactively assess their risk posture, monitor progress, prioritize risk, and develop effective mitigation plans supported by evidence. Critical Start’s Risk Assessment is also a fundamental component of the company’s recently announced MCRR approach, which delivers organizations the highest reduction in cyber risk for every dollar invested.

Security leaders face ongoing pressure to showcase their ability to manage cyber risk effectively. However, the task of accessing and analyzing various data sets required to communicate cyber risk in a manner that informs business decisions regarding security investments and projects can be challenging. By conducting an in-depth analysis, Critical Start’s Risk Assessment arms security professionals with a seamless process that ensures accurate data is captured. Coupled with prioritized risk rankings and comprehensive mitigation reports, CISOs and CIOs can effectively focus efforts, plan strategically, and strengthen their organization’s cybersecurity posture.

“Many security professionals we speak with want to take a more proactive approach to cyber risk but are unsure of where to start,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “By launching our Risk Assessment offering, we are able to provide security leaders with prescriptive guidance on the actions that have the greatest risk impacts to help ensure the most cost-effective approach to reducing cyber risk.”

Critical Start’s Risk Assessment is designed to provide organizations with a user-friendly tool for assessing their cybersecurity status, regardless of their current stage in the cybersecurity journey. With two types of assessments available, users can opt for a quick start assessment to gain a high-level understanding of their risk profile, or a comprehensive risk assessment. The platform also facilitates assessment comparison, reporting, tracking, risk rankings, and effective mitigation techniques for organizations. Simultaneously, prior assessments can be imported as well, streamlining the transition from manual or disparate processes.

The key benefits of Critical Start’s Risk Assessment include:

• Assess current risk posture with industry peer benchmarking. Manage cyber risk assessments conducted by third-party and self-assessments, compare to industry peer benchmarking, identify risk reduction priorities, and measure improvements over time.
• Quantifiable answers remove subjectivity to accelerate assessment completion, simplifies evidence gathering, and normalizes results for industry peer comparisons.
• Identify risk reduction priorities in monetary terms to determine which risks to focus on first, and where to allocate cybersecurity resources for maximum impact.
• Multiple risk and compliance frameworks: In addition to the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), frameworks risk assessments can be aligned to also include NIST 800-53, ISO 27001, CIS Critical Security Controls, SANS Top 20 Controls and more.
• Cost and time savings: Save money and effort by creating multiple types of assessments on one platform with data import, different reviewers and approvers, and built-in support for third-party professional services engagements.

For additional details on Critical Start’s Risk Assessment offering, visit the Critical Start booth, #2720, at Black Hat in Las Vegas on August 9^th and 10^th. 

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART^®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 12 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance. 

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

Media Contact:

[email protected]

New proactive approach fuses continuous cyber risk monitoring platform with human-led risk and security operations team

PLANO, TX, August 9, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced the introduction of Managed Cyber Risk Reduction (MCRR), a groundbreaking new approach to security designed to reshape the way businesses combat cyber risks. MCRR, the next evolution of MDR, provides a comprehensive managed solution to address risks, vulnerabilities, and threats.  It’s designed to go beyond threat-based detect and response to support organizational security programs across the five functions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF): Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.

Traditional approaches to cybersecurity have thus far failed to provide orchestrated, well-informed, and cost-effective risk adjusted protection across the broad areas of security that are needed to defend an organization. This is evident by the nearly two-thirds (67%) of U.S.-based cybersecurity leaders who say they have experienced a cyber breach requiring attention in the past two years, despite having implemented traditional threat-based detect and respond security measures.¹ Additionally, 66% say they are not very confident in the effectiveness of their current strategies for evaluating and mitigating major cyber risks.¹ Security leaders are also under mounting pressure to demonstrate effective management of cyber risk, with ever increasing concerns from stakeholders including boards, regulators, and customers. Accessing and analyzing the data required to communicate cyber risk in a way that informs decisions about how security investments and projects translate to risk is often laborious and painful.

MCRR by Critical Start uniquely addresses the challenges cybersecurity leaders face today.  The Critical Start Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform provides holistic cyber risk monitoring, as well as maturity assessments to peer benchmarks, posture analytics, and full response capabilities. The platform is paired with a human-led risk and security operations team that evaluates and actions threats, risks, and vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Combined with over 12 years of award-winning MDR services, MCRR enables organizations to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance.

“At a time when cyber-attacks are proliferating with increased speed and sophistication, and security teams are heavily under-resourced, businesses can no longer afford to keep with the status quo to effectively manage cyber risk and build risk resilience,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “Managed Cyber Risk Reduction extends MDR to include proactive areas of security and delivers the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested.”

“Security leaders today are increasingly being asked to do more with less under the backdrop of a failed mindset that the magic pill for cybersecurity is simply just more tools and technology,” said Craig Robinson, Research Vice President at IDC. “Organizations increase the odds substantially of outwitting cyber-attackers by taking a more proactive and holistic approach to reducing cyber risk, like the one presented by Critical Start’s new Managed Cyber Risk Reduction.”

With MCRR, customers can advance their security program over time with a strategic risk-based approach to mitigate risks in the most cost-effective ways possible. It enables the identification of assets requiring protection, ensures key security controls are effective, evaluates alerts for untrusted behavior to contain potential incidents, and limits business disruption through recovery preparedness. MCRR helps organizations identify risk quickly and continuously, and tie risk analysis into actions that demonstrate measurable improvement. It’s cost-effective, guided, and measurable.

Key features and services part of MCRR include:

• Cyber Operations Risk & Response platform: Single platform that delivers cyber risk monitoring with posture analytics, response orchestration, and threat intelligence.
• MDR: 24x7x365 monitoring, investigation and response backed by a contractual 60-minute median time to resolution (MTTR) service level agreement (SLA) across every threat centric alert type, and every priority level.
• Controls and Signals Coverage Gaps: Identifies security controls gaps, including missing endpoint protection, additional log sources for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform ingestion, and log source health monitoring to ensure the Security Operations Center (SOC) is receiving expected signals.
• MITRE-ATT&CK® Mitigations: Delivers prescribed actions to prevent an adversary from successfully executing techniques against organizations.
• Peer Benchmarked Risk Assessments: Manage cyber risk assessments conducted by third-party and self-assessments, comparisons to industry peer benchmarking, identification of risk reduction priorities, and measurement of improvements over time.
• Asset Visibility: Allows customers to determine and maintain an accurate and persistent asset inventory of critical assets across organizations.
• Vulnerability Prioritization: Identification and prioritization of vulnerabilities to patch based on active targeting and exploitation by adversaries, level of effort to exploit, remote exploitation, availability of exploit kits, and dark web threat intelligence.
• Incident Response: Incident Response (IR) retainer and readiness services with full incident and compromise scoping, triage, investigation, containment, eradication, remediation, and recovery.

New MCRR offerings from Critical Start will be available starting in October 2023. For more information, visit www.criticalstart.com/mcrr or visit the Critical Start at booth #2720 at Black Hat in Las Vegas, August 9^th and 10^th for a demo.

¹ Critical Start 2023 Cyber Risk Confidence Index

About Critical Start

Organizations today face the challenge of aligning their cyber protection measures with their risk appetite. CRITICALSTART^®, a pioneer of the industry’s first Managed Cyber Risk Reduction solutions, provides holistic cyber risk monitoring via its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, paired with a human-led risk and security operations team, combined with over 12 years of award-winning Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. By continuously monitoring and mitigating cyber risks, Critical Start enables businesses to proactively protect their critical assets with a measurable ROI. The company’s platform provides maturity assessments, peer benchmarking, posture and event analytics, and response capabilities. Its risk and security operations team evaluates and actions threats, risks, vulnerabilities, and performs comprehensive threat intelligence research. Critical Start enables organizations to achieve the highest level of cyber risk reduction for every dollar invested, allowing them to confidently reach their desired levels of risk tolerance. 

Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Instagram.

Media Contact:

[email protected]

Newly released Cyber Risk Confidence Index signals desire for greater alignment between cyber protection measures and risk appetite

PLANO,TX, August 2, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, unveiled its 2023 Cyber Risk Confidence Index, a report that analyzes the confidence levels IT security leaders have in their existing approach to reducing cyber risk, and how well their current strategies align to their organization’s risk appetite. Results of the study, conducted in partnership with research consultancy, Censuswide, revealed that 66%¹ of cybersecurity leaders in the U.S. are not very confident in the effectiveness of their current strategies for evaluating and mitigating major cyber risks.

Experts predict the cost of cybercrime will hit $8 trillion in 2023 and grow to $10.5 trillion by 2025. Yet, 83% of IT security leaders say their company prioritizes the cost of security over the risk of a breach, according to Critical Start’s research. Additionally, 67% of organizations say they have been breached in the past two years, despite having traditional threat-based detect and respond security solutions in place. Further, 61%² of respondents claim their organization’s cybersecurity investment and quantifiable risk reduction priorities are not fully aligned.

“Considering the multitude of daunting challenges cybersecurity leaders face today, ranging from sophisticated and ever-evolving threat environments to under-staffed security teams, the lack of confidence our research revealed may be alarming but is not entirely unexpected,” said Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start. “When we dive deeper into the data we gathered, a familiar story emerges of security professionals hungry for more resources and better alignment between their security investments and their organization’s appetite for risk.”

Additionally, the study also examined perceptions and attitudes security leaders have related to organizational challenges and priorities, resource constraints, and potential technology solutions to help alleviate many of their greatest pain points. Key findings in these areas include:

• Security challenges are in abundance. Critical Start’s report found that the increasing sophistication of an evolving threat landscape is the most frequent challenge cybersecurity leaders face. A similar level of concern is ascribed to the lack of resources at IT and cybersecurity leaders’ disposal (45%) and 38% of companies directly cite budgetary pressures as a problem.
• Cyber risk often falls on one person’s shoulders. While 90% of respondents say their organization has dedicated resources responsible for managing and reducing cyber risk, in almost half of situations (46%) this consists of just one person.
• Lack of continuous risk assessment hinders cyber confidence. Only 49%³ of companies are running full and comprehensive cybersecurity assessments and risk evaluations more frequently than once every six months.
• Automation becomes a need-to-have: Around half (45%) of respondents view automation as the best solution to addressing cybersecurity challenges. In fact, 82% of respondents expect security vendors to leverage AI technology to enhance their cyber risk capabilities in the next 12 months.

Research for the Critical Start 2023 Cyber Risk Confidence Index was conducted by Censuswide, via a survey of 501 U.S.-based IT security decision makers at businesses ranging from 2,500-25,000 employees. For more on the report findings and recommendations on next steps, download the report HERE.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

¹’Somewhat confident’, ‘Neither confident nor unconfident’, ‘Somewhat confident’ and ‘Very unconfident’ combined

²’Somewhat aligned’ ‘Not fully aligned’ and ‘Not aligned at all’ combined

³’Every 3-5 months’, ‘Every 2 months’, ‘Once a month’, ‘More frequently than once a month’ combined

Contact Info:

[email protected]

Plano, TX, June 26, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced the opening of two new offices strategically positioned to enhance its presence both in the United States and internationally.  The company established its second state-of-the-art Security Operations Center (SOC) with the opening of a new facility located in Lehi, Utah, and opened its first-ever Center of Excellence (COE) for engineering, located in Pune, India.

The new SOC in Lehi marks a significant domestic expansion for Critical Start, which now operates a total of two SOC facilities, both in the U.S. Comparable to the company’s original SOC, which is located at its headquarters in Plano, Texas, the new SOC is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced security analysts who provide security monitoring, investigation, and response through the company’s MDR services. These analysts undergo intensive training to enable them to provide the highest caliber of support in the industry. Now with multiple SOC locations, Critical Start will be even better equipped to address the needs of larger organizations, many of whom require their providers to have multiple SOC facilities.

Critical Start’s new COE in Pune, India marks the first global expansion for the company and will serve as a second world-class hub for its software engineering operations, augmenting the U.S.-based engineering teams. By tapping into India’s rich pool of technical talent, Critical Start will be able to accelerate the rate it can bring new solutions to market, helping customers reduce the greatest risk in their environment. The company plans to focus heavily on growing the COE throughout the year, adding more software developers, customer support resources, and implementation personnel to help facilitate further global expansion.  

“The expansion of our operations in both the new COE and the new SOC is illustrative of the heavy investments Critical Start is making in the rapid innovation necessary to mitigate the litany of cyber risks facing our customers, and in the people that are the backbone of the services we provide,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “With skilled cybersecurity talent remaining at a premium, we are proud of our SOC’s 90% staff retention rate, and we are excited to expand what is arguably one of the top employee training programs for cybersecurity professionals.”

The Critical Start SOC takes on the complexity of cybersecurity to simplify customers’ daily operations and reduce their overall cyber risk. Through integrated security products and its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, the Critical Start SOC gives customers access to 24x7x365 resources who investigate every security event ingested into the platform. This includes triage of security events, response actions that fit customers’ risk profiles, and security guidance to continue to harden customers’ infrastructures. The Critical Start SOC contractually guarantees a one-hour service level agreement for Time to Detection and Median Time to Resolution on every alert.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Report finds two-step phishing attacks increasing; Beep malware top of mind for organizations; state-sponsored cyber-espionage on the rise

PLANO, TX, June 13, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, released its biannual Cyber Threat Intelligence Report, featuring the top threats observed in the first half of 2023, and emerging cybersecurity trends impacting the healthcare, financial services, and state and local government (SLED) industries. The report also includes actionable insights to help organizations strengthen their security posture and proactively mitigate potential risk.

The cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving, and threat intelligence is essential for identifying and responding in real-time. Cybercrime has become the world’s third largest economy, and estimated to generate $8 trillion (about $25,000 per person in the US) by the end of 2023. The Critical Start Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) team analyzed a range of intelligence sources, such as customer data, open-source intelligence, vulnerability research, social media monitoring, and dark web monitoring to identify the most pressing cybersecurity threats of the first half of 2023.

Key report findings include:

• The Critical Start Security Operations Center (SOC), which monitors millions of endpoints with over 80,000 investigations a week, saw increases overall in the number of investigated alerts, alerts escalated to customers, and alerts that were of high or critical priority. In the first quarter of 2023, the SOC saw a 38.88% increase in the number of high or critical priority alerts escalated to customers over the previous quarter.
• Two-step phishing attacks are on the rise, with attackers using convincing emails that resemble legitimate vendor communications, often related to electronic signatures, orders, invoices, or tracking information.
• The new Beep malware is top of mind for organizations and individuals. This pervasive threat is delivered via email attachments, Discord, and OneDrive URLs.
• State-sponsored cyber espionage is becoming increasingly common, with threat actors operating out of Russia, potentially India, and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

“We are continuing to observe an unyielding surge in the volume of cyberthreats, including advanced malware, botnets, ransomware, cryptojacking, and more,” said Callie Guenther, Senior Manager of Cyber Threat Research at Critical Start. “While many of these attack trends are troubling, there are a number of things organizations can do to reduce their risk, such as investing in security awareness programs, updating security protocols, working with trusted partners to address vulnerabilities, and partnering with an MDR vendor like Critical Start.”

As a part of the Critical Start Cyber Research Unit (CRU), Critical Start CTI continuously monitors emerging threat developments and vulnerabilities while collaborating with the Security Engineering and SOC teams to implement new detections that reduce the risk of a breach by expanding MITRE ATT&CK threat coverage for our customers. For future updates on emerging threats, follow the Critical Start Intelligence Hub.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate, and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

PLANO, TX, June 6, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced the release of its new Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR) offering, which unifies Critical Start’s award-winning MDR service with a cloud-delivered collection, storage, and search platform for security-relevant log sources. The new service provides proactive defense that reduces the risk of a breach by bringing together threat prevention, detection, and response to thwart and mitigate threats before they cause damage.  

In the face of evolving cyber threats, companies must maintain comprehensive visibility across their IT landscape while implementing robust security measures to prevent breaches and safeguard sensitive data and systems. From ingesting and analyzing all data sources to helping customers stay ahead of emerging threats and ensuring a fortified security posture, Critical Start Managed XDR delivers measurable risk reduction, enabling businesses of all sizes to address their security needs more efficiently. Flat-rate, per-user pricing offers predictable budgeting, irrespective of data ingest volume.

“Our innovative Managed XDR solution blends the superior capabilities of Critical Start’s MDR service with the convenience of a cloud-based platform to effortlessly ingest log sources for XDR use cases and increase attack detection coverage as measured by the MITRE ATT&CK framework. It allows customers to swiftly onboard numerous log sources and reap the full benefits of our MDR service without the hassle of purchasing, owning, or managing a SIEM,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “By streamlining the process to collect, store, index, and search disparate security relevant log sources, we’re empowering organizations to stay ahead of threats and focus on their core business, while our team of experts handles the complex task of detecting and responding to potential threats.”

Critical Start Managed XDR is enhanced with management, threat detection, and response capabilities available through its MDR service complimenting MDR for Endpoint Security (EDR/EPP) deployments to provide deeper threat detection across user, cloud, applications, and network infrastructure. This layered approach, which includes a team of expert analysts monitoring customer systems 24/7 for potential security threats, helps to eliminate security gaps for long-term benefits. Built on its proprietary Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) for threat detection and response, Critical Start employs advanced technology to detect and respond to threats swiftly, providing customers with constant protection.

For additional details on the Critical Start Managed XDR offering, please explore the Critical Start blog.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Critical Start’s Female Channel Executives Recognized by CRN’s 2023 Women of the Channel List for Their Impact on the Technology Industry

PLANO, TX, May 10, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced that six of its channel leaders have been named to CRN’s Women of the Channel list for 2023: Meredith Dishman, director of distribution channels, Allie Stevens, senior director of channel and field marketing, Kate Krhovjak, channel and field marketing manager – Central, Victoria Milligan, channel and field marketing manager – East, Rebecca Bell, channel and field marketing manager – West, and Katie Pollaro, channel marketing manager.

This annual list by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, honors outstanding women from vendor, distributor and solution provider organizations whose remarkable contributions and leadership have made a significant impact on the technology industry. The inclusion of these accomplished female executives further demonstrates Critical Start’s commitment to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech community.  

“As a company that prides itself on innovation and excellence in the field of cybersecurity, we recognize the valuable role that women leaders play in driving success in the technology industry,” said Rob Davis, CEO and founder of Critical Start. “We are proud to have multiple female leaders named to CRN’s Women of the Channel list for 2023, and we congratulate them on this well-deserved recognition. With their exceptional talent and unwavering commitment to achieving channel excellence, our female leaders are a vital part of Critical Start’s continued growth and success in meeting the evolving needs of our customers in today’s rapidly changing cybersecurity landscape.”

Dishman, a seasoned channel executive with over 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, and management, has been instrumental in driving Critical Start’s routes to market and demand generation initiatives with distribution and their channel partners. She has developed programs and resources to amplify the distribution channel offerings and collaborated on channel operational processes for driving and measuring success.

Stevens, an accomplished senior director of channel and field marketing, leads a team of North American channel and field marketing professionals at Critical Start. Her passion for channel marketing is evident through her creative approach to demand generation, content creation, and enablement efforts. By fostering strong relationships with partners, Stevens ensures that Critical Start delivers value and maximizes ROI.

Krhovjak is a dedicated channel strategist who leads marketing activities and events in the Central region to engage prospects and strengthen partner relationships. Her work has advanced Critical Start’s channel operations and created mutually beneficial alliances with partners that drove new business. Krhovjak is also committed to creating meaningful experiences for Critical Start’s prospects and clients.

Milligan leverages her six years of experience in marketing, event creation, and execution of demand generation programs to drive channel and field marketing efforts in the East for Critical Start. She has significantly increased brand awareness in the East by managing over 30 unique channel events and effectively working with partners to set clear expectations, manage logistics and drive opportunities in the pipeline.

Bell, as the channel and field marketing manager for the West region, collaborates with internal teams and partners to boost revenue and increase the pipeline by implementing effective marketing strategies. Her efforts helped partners and customers better understand Critical Start’s product offerings, resulting in an enhanced customer experience and increased revenue.

Pollaro sets Critical Start’s channel marketing strategy to help increase partner mindshare and engagement to fuel pipeline. As a marketing and channel professional, she thrives in creating marketing programs, enhancing strategic partner enablement, and implementing marketing strategies that align with key business initiatives.  Pollaro is adept at developing partner relationships and building effective channel marketing programs while collaborating closely with her channel account managers.

“We are ecstatic to announce this year’s honorees and shine a light on these women for their significant achievements, knowing that what they’ve accomplished has paved the way for continued success within the IT channel,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “The channel is stronger because of them, and we look forward to seeing what they do next.”

The honorees of CRN’s 2023 Women of the Channel list bring a wealth of creativity, strategic thinking, and leadership to their respective roles and responsibilities. Whether in vendor, distributor, or solution provider organizations, these exceptional women are using their unique talents to drive success for their partners and customers. CRN’s recognition of these outstanding leaders is a testament to their unwavering dedication and commitment to achieving channel excellence and their vital contributions to the technology industry. 

The 2023 Women of the Channel list will be featured in the June issue of CRN Magazine, with online coverage starting May 8 at www.CRN.com/WOTC.

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About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

About The Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end-users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. Follow The Channel Company: Twitter and LinkedIn.

Critical Start recognized as leading innovator in Managed Detection and Response for its approach to reducing cyber risk

Plano, TX, April 26, 2023 – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, today announced it has won in the “Next Gen Managed Detection and Response (MDR)” category for this year’s Global Infosec Awards by Cyber Defense Magazine (CDM), the industry’s leading electronic information security magazine.

“For many organizations, MDR serves as the final line of defense to prevent business disruption or data loss. However, today’s enterprises face a multitude of MDR providers, each with varying capabilities, which makes selecting the right vendor crucial. Our technology driven approach to MDR has proven to be a game-changer for our customers,” said Sean Goldstein, Chief Marketing Officer at Critical Start. “Winning an award such as this validates the work we are doing to reduce cyber risk for our customers and our dedication to constantly improving the value provided by our MDR services.”

Cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, which has led to a skills shortage of more than 3.4 million, up 26.2% from 2021. With this, companies have turned to outsourcing cybersecurity responsibilities to professionals such as Critical Start, who is disrupting the industry with a comprehensive portfolio of MDR services, combined with its security analytics and response orchestration platform, designed specifically for enterprises to prevent breaches in their on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Critical Start reduces and mitigates risk exposure through 24x7x365 monitoring, detection, response, and remediation services that simplify the critical elements of cybersecurity for an organization. The company’s MDR services empower security teams to become experts with their existing security tools, derive actionable insights, and expand security operations using exclusive technology and experienced security professionals from Critical Start to safeguard critical technology infrastructure.

“We scoured the globe looking for cybersecurity innovators that could make a huge difference and potentially help turn the tide against the exponential growth in cyber-crime. Critical Start is worthy of this coveted award and consideration for deployment in your environment,” said Yan Ross, Editor of Cyber Defense Magazine.

We’re thrilled to be a member of this group of winners, located here: http://www.cyberdefenseawards.com/

Please join us at the #RSAC RSA Conference 2023, https://www.rsaconference.com/usa today, as we share our red-carpet experience and proudly display our trophy online at our website, our blog, and our social media channels.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

About CDM InfoSec Awards

This is Cyber Defense Magazine’s tenth year of honoring InfoSec innovators from around the Globe. Our submission requirements are for any startup, early stage, later stage, or public companies in the INFORMATION SECURITY (INFOSEC) space who believe they have a unique and compelling value proposition for their product or service. Learn more at www.cyberdefenseawards.com

About the Judging

The judges are CISSP, FMDHS, CEH, certified security professionals who voted based on their independent review of the company submitted materials on the website of each submission including but not limited to data sheets, white papers, product literature and other market variables. CDM has a flexible philosophy to find more innovative players with new and unique technologies, than the one with the most customers or money in the bank. CDM is always asking “What’s Next?” so we are looking for best of breed, next generation InfoSec solutions.

About Cyber Defense Magazine

Cyber Defense Magazine is the premier source of cyber security news and information for InfoSec professions in business and government. We are managed and published by and for ethical, honest, passionate information security professionals. Our mission is to share cutting-edge knowledge, real-world stories and awards on the best ideas, products, and services in the information technology industry.  We deliver electronic magazines every month online for free, and special editions exclusively for the RSA Conferences. CDM is a proud member of the Cyber Defense Media Group. Learn more about us at https://www.cyberdefensemagazine.com and visit https://www.cyberdefensetv.com and https://www.cyberdefenseradio.com to see and hear some of the most informative interviews of many of these winning company executives.  Join a webinar at https://www.cyberdefensewebinars.com and realize that infosec knowledge is power.

Top cybersecurity company unveils MDR capabilities that maximize cyber risk reduction

Plano, TX, April 25, 2023 – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, today published an essential guide to help enterprises scale up their cybersecurity program and more effectively reduce their cyber risk. The MDR market is experiencing unprecedented growth and is predicted to reach $4.6 billion by 2026. In a whitepaper titled, MDR Providers Decoded: A Comprehensive Guide to Evaluating the Top 10 Capabilities your Provider Needs, Critical Start offers an in-depth analysis of essential MDR service capabilities to reduce cybersecurity risk, assisting companies in navigating the expanding industry.

The average cost of a data breach was around $9.44 million in 2022, highlighting the potential impact of an ineffective security program. Implementing an MDR service with a security operations center has become the last line of defense against catastrophic breaches and has emerged as the centerpiece of organizations’ overall security strategy. As a result, according to Gartner®, “it’s estimated by 2025, 60% of organizations will be actively using remote threat disruption and containment capabilities delivered directly by MDR providers.”¹

In its analysis, Critical Start identified three fundamental security questions that many organizations face, which led to a list of the 10 most critical requirements needed to maximize the value received from MDR vendors:

1. How can I get the most effective detection and response solution per dollar invested to reduce my risk?
2. How can I offload my security workloads while maintaining full operational command and visibility?
3. How can I view my security maturity and confidently share measurable improvements with stakeholders?

“Security leaders grapple with these fundamental security challenges, which can significantly affect the efficacy of their security programs,” said Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start.  “While MDR services provide an essential layer of defense, not all services are created equal. That’s why Critical Start has compiled a concise and easy-to-digest analysis to help companies make informed decisions and choose the most effective MDR for their business.”

Based on Critical Start’s analysis, some of the key factors for companies to consider when selecting an MDR provider are:

• One hour or less median time to resolution contractual SLA for every alert
• Every alert actioned across multi-provider EDR, XDR and SIEM
• Direct collaboration with professional SOC analysts
• Full visibility and response actions via MobileSOC 24×7
• Rules of engagement tailored to your environment
• Provable metrics, peer benchmarking, shared customer learnings and best practices

The publication of the whitepaper is released in conjunction with Critical Start’s appearance at RSA Conference (South Hall, Booth #860) where the company will be sharing copies of the checklist with attendees.

The full whitepaper and other resources can be found here.

¹ Gartner. Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response Services, Pete Shoard, Al Price, Mitchell Schneider, Craig Lawson, Andrew Davies, 14 February 2023. https://www.criticalstart.com/resources/2023-gartner-market-guide-for-managed-detection-and-response-services/ GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. 

About Critical Start
Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Plano, TX, April 24, 2023 — Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, today announced a new partnership with Lenovo aimed at enhancing security within the company’s Digital Workplace Solutions (DWS) Group. Under the terms of the partnership, Lenovo will utilize Critical Start’s MDR services to help their customers reduce cybersecurity risk associated with security breaches by enhancing their technology investments with cutting-edge Managed Detection and Response capabilities.

“We are thrilled to partner with Lenovo to help organizations defend against today’s sophisticated cyber threats,” said Randy Watkins, Chief Technology Officer at Critical Start. “Our MDR services are designed to provide customers with the greatest amount of risk reduction per dollar spent by resolving every alert ingested within contractual service level agreements. By integrating with Lenovo’s Digital Workplace Solutions, we are delivering a complete security solution that will help organizations avoid business disruption by preventing breaches.”

Critical Start MDR services deliver 24x7x365 monitoring, investigation, and response to help security teams protect their organizations and enhance team productivity. Powered by its Zero- Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®), Critical Start’s services integrate seamlessly with multiple industry-leading security technologies, helping organizations of all sizes stay a step ahead of adversaries. The company’s MOBILESOC® app, available on iOS and Android, provides customers with the flexibility to mitigate threats from anywhere, untethered from a PC.  With Critical Start’s services integrated into DWS, Lenovo customers will have access to a comprehensive security solution that includes endpoint protection, managed SIEM, threat intelligence, and incident response capabilities.

“Providing highly secure products and solutions is core to Lenovo DNA and our Digital Workplace Solutions fully embrace that philosophy,” said Raghav Raghunathan, General Manager Lenovo Digital Workplace Solutions. “We are excited to partner with Critical Start — a company with a proven track record of delivering effective security services — to help protect our customers against cyber threats. By integrating Critical Start’s MDR services into our Digital Workplace Solutions, we are providing our customers with a security solution that is tailored to their organization’s needs,” said Pamela Cawthorn, Sr. Director DWS Cybersecurity portfolio.

“By leveraging MDR services, organizations can take advantage of an as-a-service model to enhance their security capabilities by identifying and responding to threats in real-time. Lenovo’s ThinkShield security platform now provides our customers with the ability to leverage MDR services, partnered with Critical Start.”  – Nima Baiati, Executive Director/GM, Cybersecurity Solutions/ThinkShield, Lenovo

About Critical Start

Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. Critical Start maintains a longstanding commitment to ensuring customer and partner data privacy and data sovereignty. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

About Lenovo

Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a US$70 billion revenue global technology powerhouse, ranked #171 in the Fortune Global 500, employing 82,000 people around the world, and serving millions of customers every day in 180 markets. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, Lenovo has built on its success as the world’s largest PC company by further expanding into key growth areas including server, storage, mobile, solutions and services. This transformation together with Lenovo’s world-changing innovation is building a more inclusive, trustworthy, and sustainable digital society for everyone, everywhere. To find out more visit https://www.lenovo.com, and read about the latest news via our StoryHub.

New partnership provides Critical Start and Sumo Logic customers with valuable insights to help manage their SIEM and detect and respond to threats more efficiently and effectively

Plano, TX, April 18, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced the expansion of its Security Services for SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) through a new partnership with Sumo Logic. With this partnership, Critical Start provides Sumo Logic customers the ability to reach the full operating potential of their SIEM investment for threat detection and response through improved configuration and the actioning of every alert within a 1-hour SLA.

“SIEMs are a core technology for organizations of all sizes to help them address security operations, risk and compliance monitoring use cases. However, the deployment, tuning and management of a SIEM can be a daunting challenge that further impacts the quality of threat detection and response use cases. Unfortunately, this often leads to SIEM solutions that become ‘shelfware,’ wasting both time and money while leaving critical security gaps,” said Chris Carlson, Chief Product Officer at Critical Start. “We understand this challenge all too well at Critical Start, and that’s why we are excited to partner with Sumo Logic to deliver a comprehensive solution for organizations utilizing Sumo Logic with the peace of mind, security, and expertise they need to take control of their threat detection and response capabilities and grow their security posture.”

Critical Start’s risk-based approach and context-driven insights will help Sumo Logic’s customers attain their business objectives by identifying and responding to security threats more quickly and effectively with 24x7x365 threat detection coverage. Critical Start Security Services for SIEM provides an adaptable and agile solution that minimizes the burden and cost of maintaining an in-house SIEM while effectively managing security incidents, improving overall security posture and complying with relevant regulations and standards.

“Sumo Logic is focused on helping our customers modernize security operations and achieve greater cyber resilience,” said Roger Shepard, Head of Global Partner Security Sales at Sumo Logic. “By combining the comprehensive management and real-time threat monitoring of Critical Start Security Services for SIEM with our powerful Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM solution, our customers will have access to effective threat detection and prevention across their organization, with complete visibility and control of their data, access to the latest security intel, relief from alert saturation, and the ability to scale.”

To commemorate this announcement, Critical Start Product Management Director, Steven Rosenthal, will present details of this new partnership with Sumo Logic at the RSA Conference. Stop by Sumo Logic’s booth (#5151) on April 25 at 4:30 p.m. PDT and April 26 at 2:30 p.m. PDT for a more in-depth conversation around SIEM and how this technology is expanding beyond compliance use cases to help organizations optimize their security-related telemetry.

Click here for more information on Critical Start’s Security Solutions for SIEM.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero-Trust Analytics Platform® (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

About Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMO) empowers the people who power modern, digital business. Through its SaaS analytics platform, Sumo Logic enables customers to deliver reliable and secure cloud-native applications. The Sumo Logic Continuous Intelligence Platform™ helps practitioners and developers ensure application reliability, secure and protect against modern security threats, and gain insights into their cloud infrastructures. Customers around the world rely on Sumo Logic to get powerful real-time analytics and insights across observability and security solutions for their cloud-native applications. For more information, visit www.sumologic.com.

Sumo Logic is a trademark or registered trademark of Sumo Logic in the United States and in foreign countries. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Company Names New Chief Marketing Officer and New Chief Product Officer

Plano, TX, April 12, 2023 – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced continued expansive business growth at the conclusion of its fiscal year ending January 31, 2023. This impressive growth is attributed to increased demand for its analytics and response orchestration platform combined with a human led managed SOC approach to breach prevention and cyber risk reduction. As a result of the company’s innovative MDR strategy, Critical Start has seen a twofold increase in both revenue and the number of new customers within the last 24 months.

Powered by its Cyber Operations Risk & Response™ platform, Critical Start offers customers an unparalleled level of threat detection and response, including a real-time view of attacks with step-by-step response guidance, threat coverage mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK® framework, and benchmarking of team performance. The MOBILESOC® app ensures complete accessibility to the SOC with the ability to mitigate threats from anywhere and while on the go. Critical Start currently monitors more than two million endpoints with over 80,000 investigations a week and a mean time to respond of less than 30 minutes.

To support accelerated growth, the company is excited to announce numerous investments, including the recent appointment of Sean Goldstein to Chief Marketing Officer and the promotion of Chris Carlson to Chief Product Officer.

Goldstein brings with him more than 20 years of technology marketing experience with a significant portion focused on cybersecurity. He will be tasked with continuing to accelerate Critical Start’s revenue growth and advancing the company’s vision through highly differentiated branding and strategic go-to-market initiatives. Prior to joining Critical Start, Goldstein was CMO at Panaseer, where he worked on developing the emerging cybersecurity categories of Continuous Controls Monitoring and Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management.

Carlson joined Critical Start in November 2021 as VP of Product Management, bringing over 20 years of product leadership experience with security SaaS, software, and tech-enabled services/MSSPs. He was subsequently promoted to SVP of Product in July 2022, where he transitioned to leading the company’s product and engineering groups. During that time, Carlson delivered on several key company initiatives, including innovative new dashboards and significant UI updates. In his new role as Chief Product Officer, he will continue to define and execute on the company’s product strategy.

In April 2022, Critical Start announced a strategic growth investment of over $215 million from Vista Equity Partners, a leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses. This past year, Critical Start announced the addition of several new products to its portfolio, including:

• Managed SIEM service for Microsoft Sentinel™ and Splunk Cloud® customers
• MDR service for Trend Micro™ Vision One™
• Palo Alto Networks® Cortex® XSIAM™ MDR service
• Microsoft Defender for Servers MDR service
• MDR service capabilities for Microsoft 365 Defender to detect and respond to phishing and other user account attacks
• New situational awareness, security improvement, team performance, and service efficiency dashboards for Critical Start’s Cyber Operations Risk & Response platform

“As the cybersecurity industry continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, Critical Start’s innovative approach to MDR has proven to be an industry game-changer for our customers,” said Goldstein. “I am thrilled to join the company and help organizations solve their cyber risk challenges with a cost-effective, guided, and measurable approach. At a time of accelerating market adoption for our cyber risk reduction solutions, I am looking forwarding to propelling Critical Start forward even further as a recognized industry leader.”

Critical Start has also been the recipient of numerous industry accolades and awards this past year, including:

• Microsoft Verified Managed XDR Solution Status
• Fifth place ranking on the Dallas Business Journal’s Middle Market 50 List for 2022
• Spot on 2022 CRN Fast Growth 150 List for the second year in a row
• Eleventh place ranking in the midsize companies category in the Dallas Morning News Top 100 Places to Work for 2022
• Placement on the 2022 Inc. 5000 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies in America for a second time
• Critical Start Named to 2022 CRN® Fast Growth 150 List for Second Year in a Row
• Winner of Cyber Defense Magazine’s 2022 Global InfoSec Awards for “Hot Company: MDR Service Provider” and “Publisher’s Choice: MDR”
• Rating of 4.8 on Gartner Peer Insights

Additionally, Critical Start’s Cyber Research Unit (CRU) discovered a novel method that malicious actors could use for obscuring their activities on hosts running modern versions of Microsoft Windows OS, “Ghostin’ the Shell.” This method involves the use of chained commands and I/O operators – such as pipes and chevrons – to conceal actions taken via the command line interface.

“Fueled by today’s volatile cyberthreat landscape and a shortage of skilled IT staff, demand has never been higher for Critical Start’s platform-based MDR services designed to help organizations cost-effectively mitigate cyber risk,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “As a result, we are continuing to experience explosive growth from both a revenue and product development perspective, and I have no doubt that both Sean and Chris will play integral roles in driving the next wave of momentum.”

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Cyber Operations Risk & Response platform with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Company recognized as the first channel only MDR

Plano, TX, March 27, 2023 — Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, announced today it has been recognized by CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, in its 2023 Partner Program Guide for its MDR channel program. This annual guide offers essential information to members of the IT channel ecosystem as they explore technology manufacturers’ partner programs to find the vendors that will best support their business needs.

“Recognition in CRN’s Partner Program Guide for the second consecutive year underscores Critical Start’s commitment to expanding and improving our program for our valued channel partners,” said Rob Davis, CEO and Founder of Critical Start. “We are proud of the progress we’ve made this year with our platform-based MDR solution and partner rewards program, and we remain dedicated to growing and enhancing our channel strategy to deliver the best possible security outcomes for our customers.”

Last month, Dwayne Myers, VP of Channels and Alliances at Critical Start, was recognized as a 2023 CRN Channel Chief. Critical Start also recently announced several new MDR service offerings that support Microsoft Defender for Servers, Palo Alto Networks® Cortex® XSIAM™, and Trend Micro™ Vision One™, as well as a new Managed SIEM service that supports Microsoft Sentinel™ and Splunk Cloud®.

For solution providers such as managed service providers (MSPs), value-added resellers (VARs), systems integrators, and strategic service providers, a critical factor when assessing which IT manufacturers, service providers, and distributors to team with in building an effective technology strategy is the breadth and depth of the partner programs those companies offer. Strong elements such as financial incentives, sales and marketing assistance, training and certification, technical support and more can set a vendor apart and play a key role in boosting partners long-term growth.

In the 2023 Partner Program Guide, vendors were evaluated based on program requirements and offerings such as partner training and education, pre- and post-sales support, marketing programs and resources, technical support, and communication.

“In today’s world, the need for innovation is greater than ever,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “Solution providers seek vendors that can keep pace with their developing business and evolving client needs. CRN’s 2023 Partner Program Guide delivers deep insight into the strengths of each program, spotlighting the vendors dedicated to supporting their partner community and pushing positive change throughout the IT channel.”

The 2023 Partner Program Guide will be featured in the April 2023 issue of CRN and online at www.CRN.com/PPG.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero Trust Analytics Platform™ (ZTAP®) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry™ (TBR) and MOBILESOC®. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

About The Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers and end users. Backed by nearly 40 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

© 2023 The Channel Company LLC. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

PLANO, Texas – April 12, 2022 – Investment enables Managed Detection and Response leader Critical Start to further accelerate rapid growth amid global escalation in cyber threat landscape – Critical Start (or “the Company”), a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) cybersecurity solutions, today announced an over $215 million strategic growth investment from Vista Equity Partners (“Vista”), a leading global investment firm focused exclusively on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses. The capital infusion will enable Critical Start to further accelerate growth, continue to rapidly scale the breadth and depth of its MDR offerings, and reach a wider range of customers who are investing heavily in cybersecurity as the volatile threat landscape escalates across the globe.

Critical Start’s MDR platform simplifies breach prevention by helping organizations identify, assess, and respond to cyber threats in real time while analyzing threat data to inform future responses. The Company’s technology and security operation center (SOC) analysts leverage a deep pool of behavioral data to automatically resolve over 99% of security alerts, reduce risk acceptance, and improve team productivity. In addition to the Company’s MDR platform, Critical Start’s Incident Response Team provides hands-on readiness, response and forensic services for enterprise security teams.

“Our goal at Critical Start is to be the most effective, easiest to consume and quickest to deploy Managed Detection and Response service, and we believe this investment from Vista will help us continue to expand our differentiation in how we help protect our customers from cyber-attacks,” said Rob Davis, Founder and CEO of Critical Start. “For the past ten years, we have been laser focused on protecting our customers from the most sophisticated cyber threats by building a best-in-class technology platform and team. We are thrilled to partner with Vista given their team’s deep understanding of the enterprise technology and security landscape and the resources they can deliver to help us continue along our tremendous growth trajectory.”

Critical Start has experienced rapid growth as enterprises cope with a rising volume of threats and a wide cybersecurity talent gap, putting the Company’s managed services in high demand. Critical Start serves hundreds of MDR customers with a focus on midsize and large enterprises across a broad range of industries including manufacturing, retail, government, healthcare, financial services and energy. The Company has grown ARR by more than 400% in the last three years and diversified its channel network across 90 channel partners through its integrations with third-party cybersecurity software providers including Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Crowdstrike, Splunk, SentinelOne and VMWare.

Committed to a 100% channel go-to-market model, Critical Start will use the capital from Vista to further invest in its technology, product, and service offerings as well as meaningfully expand its talented teams to meet the massive market demand.

“Across every industry, enterprises are seeking trusted providers to help protect themselves from the increasing volume of cyber-attacks, particularly given the large and increasing shortage of available sophisticated security talent,” said Ryan Atlas, Managing Director at Vista Equity Partners. “Differentiated technology, working together with their expert service and support teams, makes Critical Start the managed solutions provider of choice for organizations looking to improve their security posture and protect themselves cost-effectively against the rapidly evolving cyber-threats.”

“The demand for MDR services is soaring as organizations of all sizes and across all industries recognize the criticality of 24/7/365 cyber threat vigilance,” said Marc Teillon, Co-Head of Vista’s Foundation Fund and Senior Managing Director. “With superior technology, trusted service, and best-in-class customer advocacy, Critical Start is well positioned to be a winner in the category, and we look forward to supporting Rob and the team on this next chapter of growth.”

DC Advisory served as financial advisor to Critical Start and DLA Piper LLP served as legal counsel. Kirkland & Ellis LLP served as legal advisor to Vista.

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies breach prevention by delivering the most effective managed detection and incident response services powered by the Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) with the industry’s only Trusted Behavior Registry (TBR) and MOBILESOC. With 24x7x365 expert security analysts, and Cyber Research Unit (CRU), we monitor, investigate, and remediate alerts swiftly and effectively, via contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR), and 100% transparency into our service. For more information, visit criticalstart.com. Follow Critical Start on LinkedIn, @CRITICALSTART, or on Twitter, @CRITICALSTART.

About Vista Equity Partners

Vista is a leading global investment firm with over $93 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2021. The firm exclusively invests in enterprise software, data and technology-enabled organizations across private equity, permanent capital, credit, and public equity strategies, bringing an approach that prioritizes creating enduring market value for the benefit of its global ecosystem of investors, companies, customers and employees. Vista’s investments are anchored by a sizable long-term capital base, experience in structuring technology-oriented transactions and proven, flexible management techniques that drive sustainable growth. Vista believes the transformative power of technology is the key to an even better future – a healthier planet, a smarter economy, a diverse and inclusive community and a broader path to prosperity. Further information is available at vistaequitypartners.com. Follow Vista on LinkedIn, @Vista Equity Partners, and on Twitter, @Vista_Equity.

Plano, Texas – March 29, 2022 – These latest enhancements allow customers to leverage Microsoft 365 Defender and MDR to not only identify but also immediately respond to breaches stemming from user account-based attacks. – Today, Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, introduced industry unique capabilities around Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services for the Microsoft 365 Defender security suite that protect against phishing, brute force, and cloud application attacks on user credentials.  Other MDR providers offer recommendations, while the Critical Start SOC responds on behalf of the customer to stop user account attacks that are often a precursor to a breach.

These enhanced capabilities allow customers to extend existing defenses and prevent breaches stemming from user account-based attacks. Figures and analysis from the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) reveal that “credentials remain one of the most sought-after data types”, continuing a trend noted in previous iterations of the report. Since cyber-criminals are continuing to focus their attacks on credentials that will allow them to stay hidden as they access networks rather than hacking the networks themselves, users need to be able to quickly detect and easily take action to disrupt these attacks.

“By adding threat detection and response capabilities for credential and user account attacks into our MDR platform, Critical Start goes beyond the endpoint to protect against one of the most common attack vectors involved in the majority of breaches,” said Chris Carlson, vice president of product at Critical Start. “This new expansion of capabilities was developed in direct response from customers that MDR providers need to go beyond giving recommendations for action and swiftly respond to stop attacks in progress.  Critical Start now grants our customers the ability to improve their organizations’ security postures as well as their overall readiness to face off against credential-based attacks.”

With the combined power of Critical Start’s existing MDR services and the Microsoft security suite, alerts can be brought in from multiple Microsoft systems, including user-reported email phishing attempts, Azure Active Directory identity alerts and alerts triggered by anonymous login IPs to business applications running from Defender for Cloud Apps.

The expanded offering allows for optimized detection and response for different kinds of attacks that could result in users’ account becoming compromised, including in the following use cases:

• Credential Harvesting through Email Phishing: Multiple steps in credential harvesting attacks, such as real phishing emails and malicious links, are detected. Critical Start provides courses of action to disrupt the chain and update potentially compromised user accounts.
• Attacks Against Cloud Applications: Adversaries that gain access to an organization’s cloud applications find themselves with access to the entire organization’s sensitive data. Critical Start’s Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) automates investigating alerts from Microsoft 365 Defender suite products and elevates any real threats to the Critical Start SOC analysts for investigation. Critical Start can also provide responses for potentially stolen credentials including disabling an account, forcing a logout and enforcing password changes.
• Brute Force Attacks: When unable to gain access to an organization’s data through stolen or purchased credentials, adversaries will attempt to break in via brute force attacks with weak passwords. When this occurs, Critical Start’s platform automates investigating alerts from Microsoft 365 Defender suite products and elevates legitimate threats to the Critical Start SOC analysts for investigation. Critical Start can also provide responses for potentially stolen credentials including disabling an account, forcing a logout and enforcing password changes.
• Security Awareness Training to Defend against Phishing Attacks: Critical Start adds additional email phishing analysis in combination with Microsoft’s native capabilities, further supporting security awareness training by enabling a positive feedback loop informing employees of the outcome of the reported email.

More information can be found here: https://www.criticalstart.com/our-solutions/managed-detection-response-services/xdr/microsoft-365-defender/

About Critical Start

Today’s enterprise faces radical, ever-growing, and ever-sophisticated multi-vector cyber-attacks. Facing this situation is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Critical Start simplifies the complexity of cybersecurity by extending your team with a comprehensive enterprise solution of flexible services, exclusive technology and seasoned security experts that deeply understand and adapt with your organization’s unique needs and collaborate with you to detect the right threats and respond with the right actions. We strive to provide peace of mind and value with contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Time to Detection (TTD) and Median Time to Resolution (MTTR) and 100% transparency into our service.

PLANO, Texas, Feb. 24, 2022 — The MDR services provider has added two new roles and promoted three existing employees to Vice President positions — Critical Start, a leading and trusted provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, announced today that Chris Carlson has been hired as the Vice President of Product and Randy Turer has been hired as Vice President of North American Sales. The company also announced that several existing employees have been promoted to the vice president and senior vice president levels.

“As cybersecurity threats have grown in number and complexity, so has the need for solutions to proactively prevent breaches in a quick and easy manner, meaning that companies can no longer settle for the ‘good enough’ option,” said Critical Start founder and CEO Rob Davis. “Chris and Randy bring a combination of unique experiences that will allow us to continue delivering the most advanced solutions to our customers in a quick, effective and transparent manner. The internal promotions are a testament to the dedication of our team to ensuring our customers’ experiences are optimized to their needs.”

In his role as Vice President of Product, Chris Carlson is responsible for the development of the company’s product strategy and roadmap as well as the delivery of the company’s MDR solutions. The former VP of Product at top industrial control system security provider Dragos and leading vulnerability management vendor Qualys, Carlson brings more than 20 years of product management experience to this new role. He has also served in product-related roles at Hexis Cyber, Invincea and Agent Logic as well as consulting and security architecture roles at SAIC, Booz Allen and UBS.

“Dedication to delivering a stellar product and experience for clients is something I’m passionate about,” said Carlson. “I’m excited to be joining a company that values that as well.”

As Vice President of North American Sales, Randy Turer will serve as the sales leader for the company’s MDR services and will work to drive sales engagements with the company’s partner community, ensure customer satisfaction and help cultivate mutually beneficial partnerships. Turer has a wealth of experience in the security and technology industries. He was previously the head of North America Sales at Absolute Software and has held sales and leadership positions at Symantec, McAfee and ForeScout.

“Critical Start has set the standard for MDR services and has an established track record of success,” said Turer. “I am looking forward to growing our sales organization and working with the team to drive significant growth through our channel community in North America.”

In addition to these new hires, Critical Start has announced three internal promotions. Sarah Mutscheller has been promoted to Vice President of Growth Marketing, which will see her taking charge of the digital, demand generation, content marketing and marketing operations. Jim Rohde has been promoted from Director of Presales to Vice President of Presales. In this role, Jim will continue growing his team and building the presales charter to best showcase the benefits of Critical Start and the value the company’s offerings can deliver. Bill Thrash has been promoted from Vice President of Customer Success to Senior Vice President of Customer Operations, where he will continue to head up Critical Start’s customer experience efforts, including simplifying the onboarding and implementation process for new customers and the satisfaction of all customers.

PLANO, Texas, Dec. 15, 2020 — Critical Start a leading cybersecurity provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, has been named to the annual Vet100 list – a compilation of the nation’s fastest-growing veteran-owned businesses. The ranking, created in partnership with Inc. magazine and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), was born out of the iconic Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies based in the U.S. Both distinctions are considered hallmarks of entrepreneurial success.

Originally established as the Vet50 list, this year’s list is the third iteration expanded to include 100 veteran-owned businesses in acknowledgment of the growing culture and success of veteran entrepreneurs.

“Military service members have a proven ability to learn new skills and concepts while being able to work with discipline as part of a team. These traits make for a very successful transition to a career in cybersecurity,” said Rob Davis, CEO of Critical Start. “Since our founding in 2012, our continuous growth, company recognition and numerous awards have been powered in large part by our veteran workforce.”

“Business growth is a real economic driver in this country and the fact is that most of the new jobs in the economy – over 87 percent – are created by private businesses,” says Eric Schurenberg, CEO of Mansueto Ventures, publisher of Inc. Magazine. “Veteran entrepreneurs contribute their share to the job story, employing over 5.5 million. They deserve to be recognized for their continued service to the country.”

“Military experience provides veteran entrepreneurs with skills and knowledge we know to be valuable in the business world,” said Mike Haynie, Syracuse University Vice-Chancellor and IVMF Founder and Executive Director. “The growth of this year’s list is a hopeful and inspiring indication of how important and valuable veteran entrepreneurs are to our society and economy. These businessmen and women not only served in defense of our collective freedom and security, they now continue to serve by bettering the economies in their communities and across the country. We are proud to partner again with Inc. magazine and are grateful for their efforts to shine a spotlight on the success of veteran-owned businesses.”

Vet100 honorees will be formally recognized during the Vet100 Awards dinner at IVMF’s Veteran EDGE Conference, to be held in Dallas, TX, in October 2021. EDGE is the first-of-its-kind coalition of large companies supporting the success of veteran-owned businesses, connecting them with entrepreneurial education, training, resources, and networking opportunities.

For more information on the Inc. Vet100 list, visit: https://ivmf.syracuse.edu/Vet100/  

About Critical Start

Critical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

About Inc. and the Inc. 5000

Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today’s innovative company builders. Total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 20,000,000 today. For more information, visit http://www.inc.com/.

The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. Now in its 40th year, this prestigious list of the nation’s most successful private companies has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success.

About Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families

Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) delivers no-cost career training and entrepreneurship programs across the US and globally. And we help ease the transition after service back into communities for service members, veterans and their families as well as prepare them for successful careers and business ownership. We’ve supported over 150,000 to date. It’s our mission to support theirs. For more information, visit ivmf.syracuse.edu and follow the IVMF on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

PLANO, Texas, Dec. 3, 2020 — Critical Start  a leading cybersecurity provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, today announced it received the Palo Alto Networks America’s Cortex Partner of the Year Award.

Announced during the Palo Alto Networks Partner Summit, during the Ignite ’20 Cybersecurity Conference, these annual awards are presented to an elite group of Palo Alto Networks partners that over the past 12 months have excelled in the following areas:

• Performance: Bookings that partners initiate, the pipeline they build, innovative new services launched, and net new customers added.
• Enablement: Number of Palo Alto Networks technical, pre-sales, sales and post-sales training and certifications completed
• Engagement: Nominated by the Palo Alto Networks team for exceptional engagement with Palo Alto Networks and our customers.

Critical Start partners with Palo Alto Networks to provide innovative end-to-end managed detection and response solutions to our mutual customers. Critical Start leverages Palo Alto Networks’ AI-driven Cortex XDR™, its extended detection and response platform that covers endpoint, network, and cloud data. Palo Alto Networks has recognized Critical Start as a partner of choice with merits like the Professional Services Partner of the Year award, the “PartnerUp” – Excellence in Partnership Contribution award, among others.

“The ever-changing and challenging 2020 security landscape has meant cybersecurity professionals have had to compete with an onslaught of cyber threats at a pace not previously seen,” said Rob Davis, founder and CEO of Critical Start. “We are honored to be recognized by Palo Alto Networks for rising to the occasion as a leader in MDR solutions for companies in every industry and vertical.”

“At Palo Alto Networks, our partners play a critical role in securing the tech-enabled future of the enterprise, and never has that been more apparent against a backdrop of challenges in 2020,” said Don Jones, Senior Vice President, Ecosystems at Palo Alto Networks. “Enterprises rely on Palo Alto Networks technology and our trusted partners to bring the services and solutions that offer choice, flexibility, and simplicity. That adds up to better customer deployments and faster time to value. We’re proud to recognize Critical Start on their America’s Cortex Partner of the Year Award for delivering valuable business outcomes and helping our mutual customers protect their digital way of life.”

For more information on Critical Start, please visit this page. For more information on Palo Alto Networks, please visit this page.

About Critical Start
Critical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

PLANO, Texas, Nov. 12, 2020 — Critical Start,  a leading cybersecurity provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services,  is among the top 100 companies from around the world selected for the 16^th annual Aggie 100. The event honors the fastest-growing companies owned or operated by former students of Texas A&M University.

Critical Start earned the 80th spot on the list with a compound annual growth rate of 35.755%. The continuous growth has made it a leader in MDR solutions for companies in every industry and vertical. Texas A&M University alum and Critical Start founder and CEO Rob Davis, has led the company since its inception, bringing his cybersecurity expertise to an increasingly competitive industry.

“The growth of our company could not have been made possible without the diversity and determination of our entire team,” said Davis. “It is impressive that the Aggie 100 should recognize the importance of a cybersecurity company for the scores of future Texas A&M students who wish to strengthen the field.” It was at Texas A&M where Davis earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and recognized the market need for a client-focused, customized approach to cybersecurity.

The 100 Aggie-owned companies with the highest compound annual revenue growth from 2017 to 2019 were revealed and recognized during a live-stream awards showcase on Friday, November 6, 2020. The awards production is available for viewing at tx.ag/2020Aggie100.

“The Aggie 100 brand represents the most elite group of successful Aggie entrepreneurs, whose endeavors have truly made our world a better place to live. Texas A&M recognizes both their individual efforts and their collective success, in the same way these Honorees acknowledge the important role our beloved university played in the development of their character. The McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship proudly embodies the legacy through which our Aggie 100 Honorees can contribute to developing the next great generation of Aggie entrepreneurs.” said Blake Petty ’98, Director of the McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship.

About Critical Start

CCritical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

PLANO, Texas, Nov. 3, 2020 — Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, announced today it has been recognized by Tech Titans as the 14th fastest growing technology company in North Texas.

The company’s growth can be accredited to the rise in cyberattacks, which is driving demand for Critical Start‘s MDR solution. As a result, Critical Start‘s MDR business has exploded, with a growth of 94.7% over the last 12 months. This rapid growth is driven by mid-size firms and enterprises looking for help combatting today’s complex and rapidly evolving human and machine-generated security threats.

In its second fiscal quarter this year, Critical Start had its largest sales quarter-to-date for its MDR business and continues to add to the 60 partners in its channel program. In less than a year and a half, the company has more than doubled its number of employees, with plans to double in size again in the next 16 months.

“Critical Start is truly honored to be recognized by Tech Titans as one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the region,” said CEO Rob Davis. “We are proud to be part of the technology community in North Texas and look forward to more years of success among many other talented companies.”

About Critical Start 
Critical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

PLANO, Texas, Oct. 14, 2020 – Congratulations to Critical Start CEO, Rob Davis, who has been selected by an independent panel of judges as an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2020 Southwest Finalist. Rob was selected as a finalist for his vision, leadership, and determination in our ever-changing world.

Widely considered as one of the most prestigious business award programs in the U.S., this program recognizes entrepreneurs and leaders of high-growth companies who are excelling in areas such as innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their businesses and communities- while also transforming our world.

Growing up, Rob Davis always had a creative, entrepreneurial mindset. Case in point: In middle school, his family had an old computer that needed more storage, so he created a cassette tape to back up the programs. Every summer, Davis would challenge himself to learn or create something different.

Today, Davis has applied this early mindset to business. During his stint as an executive with RSA Security, Davis recognized a fundamental conflict between what organizations needed to address their security challenges and what the industry was telling them they needed.

“Historically, organizations believed that investing in more technology would solve their security challenges,” says Davis. “Yet in reality, most companies weren’t spending enough time on security fundamentals. Companies seeking solutions to cyberattacks were focused on products only. Simply adding more technology on top of faulty security practices does not solve security issues.”

Recognizing that there’s a better way to deliver cybersecurity solutions, Davis started Critical Start in 2012, bringing to market a concept that emphasizes people, process and configuration. “Our solution changed the conversation within the industry to consider how information technology (IT) impacts business, risk tolerance, and specific threats of concern,” says Davis.

Critical Start’s managed security services, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR), incident response, professional services, and product fulfillment, helps organizations prepare for, respond to, and resolve breaches. The company’s goal is to build the easiest-to-use, quickest-to-deploy, and most effective MDR platform in the cybersecurity industry. Today, the company is experiencing tremendous growth, as firms seek help combatting today’s complex and rapidly evolving security threats including a 101% year-over-year revenue increase in 2019, an employee count that has nearly doubled in the last 12 months to more than 200 employees, and a move to a new 33,000-square-foot headquarters to support this continued growth. A key part of the company’s growth is a culture that puts both customers and employees first.

“When I launched Critical Start, I wanted to create a culture based on three core principles: do what’s right for the customer, don’t do things that suck, and do what’s right for our employees,” Davis says.

In addition, most important is the culture of caring that starts with Davis. This great culture is important for retention. Critical Start has an employee retention rate of 98.6% – an amazing statistic in the cybersecurity industry.

“We’re doing everything we can to create meaningful work experiences for our employees,” Davis says. “Implementing a great culture is key to business, as well as keeping our customers safe against cyberattacks and other malicious activity.”

Read more from Rob Davis’s EY Entrepreneur profile here.

PLANO, Texas, Sept. 29, 2020 – Fourth-Annual List Honors Leading MSSP, MDR and SOCaaS Cybersecurity Companies Worldwide — MSSP Alert, published by After Nines Inc., has named Critical Start to the Top 250 MSSPs list for 2020.

The list and research identify and honor the top MSSPs, Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and Security Operations Center as a Service (SOCaaS) providers worldwide.

The rankings are based on MSSP Alert’s 2020 readership survey combined with the digital media site’s global editorial coverage of managed security services providers. The fourth-annual list has expanded from 2019 (200 honorees) and 2018-2017 (100 honorees) amid MSSP Alert’s continued, organic readership growth.  

“Critical Start is honored to be named to the top 40 on MSSP Alert’s Top 250 MSSPs list,” said founder and CEO Rob Davis. “During a year of unprecedented uncertainty and increased threats, our team has continued to deliver excellent service by protecting our customers from cyberattacks. In this ever-changing landscape, we will continue to evolve and innovate in order to meet our customers’ changing needs.”

“After Nines Inc. and MSSP Alert congratulate Critical Start on this year’s honor,” said Amy Katz, CEO of After Nines Inc. “Despite the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s honorees continue to accelerate their businesses, mitigate customer risk and safeguard digital assets worldwide.”

Highlights from the associated MSSP Alert research include:

• MSSP Revenue Growth: MSSP honorees, on average, expect to generate $19.15 million in revenue for 2020, up 16% from $16.47 million in 2019.
• Geography: Honorees are headquartered in 25 different countries – up from 19 countries in the 2019 report.
• Profits: 84% of MSSPs surveyed expect to be profitable for fiscal year 2020.
• Security Operations Centers: 67% have in-house SOCs, 24% are hybrid, 6% completely outsource their SOCs, and 3% are reevaluating their SOC strategies.
• Cyberattack Trends: The most frequent attacks targeting MSSP customers in 2020 include phishing (95%), vulnerability (76%) and ransomware (69%) attacks.
• Cybersecurity Solutions: In a continued sign of market fragmentation, MSSP survey participants mentioned 129 different hardware, software, cloud, and services vendors that assist their cybersecurity efforts – up from 95 in 2019.
• M&A: Mergers, acquisitions and private equity investments continue to accelerate across the MSSP landscape. Twenty high-profile deals involving MSSP 250 honorees have surfaced since last year’s report.

The Top 250 MSSPs list and research were overseen by Content Czar Joe Panettieri (@JoePanettieri). Find the online list and associated report here: http://www.msspalert.com/top250.

The company’s growth can be attributed to the surge in cyberattacks, which is driving demand for Critical Start‘s MDR solution. As a result, Critical Start‘s MDR business has exploded, with growth of 101% in 2019, compared to the previous fiscal year. This rapid growth is driven by mid-size firms and enterprises looking for help combatting today’s complex and rapidly evolving human and machine-generated security threats.

About Critical Start
Critical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.

About After Nines Inc.
After Nines Inc. provides timeless IT guidance for strategic partners and IT security professionals across ChannelE2E (www.ChannelE2E.com) and MSSP Alert (www.MSSPAlert.com). ChannelE2E tracks every stage of the IT service provider journey — from entrepreneur to exit. MSSP Alert is the global voice for Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs).  

Plano, TX, May 19, 2020 — Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services,  announced today that CRN_®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Tera Davis to its 2020 Power 40 Solution Providers, an elite subgroup of extraordinary individuals selected from the prestigious Women of the Channel list.

The CRN^® editorial team reviews a plentitude of channel leadership applications to identify professionals who demonstrate groundbreaking vision, expertise, and continuous commitment to the IT channel. The Power 40 Solution Providers are an exclusive subset of an already-esteemed list of women in solution provider organizations who continue to drive professional success through significant influence, leadership, and dedication to their own organizations and the entire IT channel.

Tera has been instrumental in driving the strategic direction of Critical Start’s channel growth. In the past year, Tera has cultivated mutually beneficial relationships with Critical Start’s strategic business partners, helping the company increase year-over-year (YoY) revenue 34% in the first nine months of 2019, and the company’s Managed Detection & Response (MDR) business, which grew 165% YTD in 2019. She has also participated in partner advisory councils for key vendors to provide input on how to improve their programs.

“It is a tremendous honor to be recognized not just for the work we have accomplished at Critical Start, but also alongside so many great women leaders in the IT channel,” said Davis. “In the weeks, months, and years ahead, I cannot wait to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible so that we can continue our growth and grow our partnerships in this emerging sector.”

“CRN’s 2020 Women of the Channel list recognizes an accomplished group of influential women leaders whose strategic vision and unique achievements accelerate channel growth through nurtured partnerships, innovative thought leadership, and unwavering dedication to the IT channel,” said Bob Skelley, CEO of The Channel Company. “We are proud to honor them for their accomplishments and contributions to driving channel success.”

The 2020 Women of the Channel and Power 40 Solution Provider lists will be featured in CRN^® Magazine on June 8 and online at www.CRN.com/WOTC.

About Critical Start

Critical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

About The Channel Company
The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequalled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelcompany.com

Follow The Channel Company: Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook
Copyright ©2020. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC.  All rights reserved.

The Channel Company Contact:
Jennifer Hogan
The Channel Company
[email protected] Top of Form 1

PLANO, Texas, Feb. 25, 2020 – New channel model, minority investment among key milestones — Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, announced Tuesday the company’s MDR business grew 101% last year compared to the previous fiscal year. This rapid growth is driven by mid-size firms and enterprises looking for help combatting today’s complex and rapidly evolving human and machine-generated security threats. To accommodate the increased business, Critical Start expanded its headquarters by adding nearly 100 new employees and an additional 33,000 square feet of office space.

“Critical Start experienced explosive growth in 2019, which we believe is a direct result of doing the right thing for our customers and attracting the most talented employees in the industry,” said Rob Davis, CEO at Critical Start. “Our platform for MDR services features our Trusted Behavior Registry and MobileSOC applications that make us unique in the value we provide our clients. None of this is possible without our fantastic customers and employees.”

In June of 2019, Critical Start received a $40 million minority investment from growth equity firm Sagemount to significantly expand MDR services nationally and substantially increase development resources for the MDR platform built to provide Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) for service providers.

The company made a number of strategic moves during 2019, including a shift to a channel-only model and the appointment of Dwayne Myers as Vice President of Channels and Alliances to lead the expansion of the company’s national distributors, a network of value-added resellers and other channel partners. Over 20 trusted advisor channel and MSP partners have joined the Critical Start partner program to date.

Additionally, the company published new research revealing that Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts continue to face an overwhelming number of alerts each day that are taking longer to investigate. The most striking finding was the direct toll that the alert overload problem has on SOC analysts, with more than 8 out of 10 reporting that their SOC experienced a double-digit percentage of analyst churn during the last year.

Other recent milestones include:

• The appointment of Andrew Kaufman as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer.
• Product updates including a MobileSOC redesign for iOS and Android that features improved workflow and visualizations to reduce attacker dwell time by speeding up the user’s ability to communicate directly with Critical Start‘s SOC analysts.
• Distribution agreements signed with Ingram Micro Inc. and SYNNEX Corporation to provide the company’s MDR services to the distributors’ extensive and growing network of U.S. channel partners.
• New partnerships to add Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), SentinelOne, Chronicle Backstory, and Microsoft Azure Sentinel to the Critical Start MDR platform.

About Critical Start
Critical Start is the MDR expert that leaves nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

PLANO, Texas, Feb. 25, 2020 – Critical Start has been named to CRN’s MSP 500 list for 2020, in the Security 100 category.

CRN’s Managed Service Provider 500 list recognizes the top technology providers and consultants whose forward-thinking approach to providing managed services is changing the landscape of the IT channel. This annual list honors solution providers who bring innovative approaches to managed services, companies who support customers through improved operational efficiencies and systems to maximize return on investments.

Critical Start was recognized as a result of the company’s strategic moves, including expanded Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution nationally, the growth of the company’s North American MDR sales team, and new partnerships with SentinelOne, Chronicle BackStory, Microsoft Defender ATP, and Microsoft Azure Sentinel.

This comes after Critical Start‘s recent announcement that the company’s MDR business grew 101% last year compared to the previous fiscal year. This rapid growth is driven by mid-size firms and enterprises looking for help combatting today’s complex and rapidly evolving human and machine-generated security threats. To accommodate the increased business, Critical Start expanded its headquarters by adding nearly 100 new employees and an additional 33,000 square feet of office space.

“Critical Start experienced explosive growth in 2019, which we believe is a direct result of doing the right thing for our customers and attracting the most talented employees in the industry,” said Rob Davis, CEO at Critical Start. “Our platform for MDR services features our Trusted Behavior Registry and MobileSOC applications that make us unique in the value we provide our clients. None of this is possible without our fantastic customers and employees.”

To learn more about our MDR offerings, contact us today!

See the full list here

PLANO, Texas, Nov. 26, 2019 – The news just keeps getting better for Critical Start! The Tech Tribune staff compiled a list of the very best tech startups in Plano, Texas and recognized Critical Start as one of the best, ranked #3 out of the top 10.

As part of its research into the top tech companies, The Tech Tribune team considered several factors, including but not limited to revenue potential, company leadership team, brand and product traction, and competitive landscape.

Additionally, companies recognized must be independent (un-acquired), privately owned, at most 10 years old, and have received at least one round of funding.

Critical Start clearly met all the criteria. We’re excited to continue our growth as we work to meet the critical need for Managed Detection & Response (MDR) services and help organizations detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert.

To see the complete list of all 2020 Best Tech Startups in Plano, please visit the full article here.

November 26, 2019

Plano, TX – November 22, 2019 – List Recognizes Fastest-Growing Privately Held Businesses in the Dallas Area – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, today announced that it has been selected once again as one of the Dallas 100™ by Southern Methodist University (SMU) in recognition of the company’s significant growth. The Dallas 100™, co-founded by the SMU Cox Caruth Institute, celebrates the innovative spirit, determination and business savvy of the fastest-growing privately held entrepreneurial businesses in the Dallas area.

The Cox School’s Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship ranks the top 100 Dallas privately-held entrepreneurial companies annually based on percentage growth and absolute dollar growth over the previous three years. The Institute, working with the accounting firm BKD LLP CPAs and Advisors examined sales from hundreds of companies for 2016 to 2018, the last year for which complete data is available.

This year’s winning companies collectively generated $3.5 billion in sales in 2018, according to Simon Mak, the Linda A. and Kenneth R. Morris Endowed Director of the Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship at SMU Cox.Collectively, the companies grew at an average annual growth rate of 82 percent from 2016 to 2018. Together, they created almost 7,000 jobs in that same period. 

“These companies are the unsung heroes of the Dallas-area economy,” said Mak. “They are entrepreneurial dynamos, creating products and/or services that in turn create jobs and generate income for their owners, not to mention the millions of dollars they collectively contribute to our economy. For almost three decades now, it has been our honor at the Caruth Institute of Entrepreneurship to shine the spotlight on the critical role of entrepreneurship in the DFW economy.”

The winners were honored at the 29^th Annual SMU Cox Dallas 100™ Awards Ceremony and Banquet, held on Thursday, November 21^st at the Omni Dallas Hotel.

“As enterprises continue to deal with increasing ransomware, breaches and other cybersecurity threats, we’ve seen our MDR business accelerate and fuel our expansion across the country,” said Rob Davis, CEO at Critical Start. “Being named to the Dallas 100™ list for the third consecutive year recognizes that significant growth and underscores the hard work and achievement of our entire team. We couldn’t be more excited to continue growing our business in the thriving tech ecosystem in Dallas.”

In addition to being named to the Dallas 100™ list, Critical Start was also recently named to the “Best Places to Work” and the Middle Market 50 lists by the Dallas Business Journal.

About Critical Start

Critical Start, the MDR experts that leave nothing to chance. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit criticalstart.com for more information.

PLANO, TX – Nov. 13, 2019 – Cybersecurity software company Critical Start was created in response to a number of cyberattacks on businesses and government organizations at the beginning of the decade and to address what founder and CEO Rob Davis saw was lacking in the marketplace.

Now, nearly seven years after its launch, Critical Start is focused on staying ahead of trends in the cybersecurity ecosystem, while rapidly expanding its size and reach.

“The culture of the company is ‘do what’s right for the customer,’ and everyone says that, but we kind of live and die by that,” Davis said. “Be vigilant, be diligent, and if you see something, report it. The key thing is… it helps to test your security to know where you are.”

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Featured in NTX INNO | November 13, 2019

PLANO, TX – Oct. 31, 2019 – We’ve always known Critical Start is a great place to work, and now we have additional proof. The Dallas Business Journal recently honored Critical Start as one of the top 100 workplaces in North Texas, ranking 5^th overall in the mid-sized company category.

Employee engagement and satisfaction played a primary role in the award criteria. Critical Start scored a 94.10 out of 100, so clearly, we have a happy team! Other fun factoids:

• 90% of our employees are highly engaged and excited to work for the company.
• Employees feel they have access to learning and development opportunities, according to 97% of the men and 82% of the women surveyed in our company.
• Our culture works well for nearly every age group in our company, according to responses from 94 – 98% of employees across each of the generations.
• “Challenging” is the best description of the Critical Start work environment.
• 95% of Critical Start employees feel valued by the company, as senior leaders see people as their most important resource.

Employees were invited to provide responses to several open-ended questions. One of the responses that best summarizes Critical Start:

“Critical Start has an amazing culture that is established from senior leadership and pushed down through the rest of the organization. Everyone in the organization is empowered to make decisions they have the most relevant information to make. Our workplace is fun and weird, with each employee bringing a different personality, skill set, hobby and quirk. We are a caring organization where new employees are additions to the family, and we take care of our own.

Finally, another says Critical Start’s “fail-fast and never alone culture helps us always do what’s right for our customers and employees while holding to another core belief: Don’t do things that suck!”

Thank you to all the employees at Critical Start – we are who we are, because of you!

PLANO, TX – October 1, 2019 – Coinciding with National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2019, we want to remind organizations about the importance of taking proactive steps to enhance cybersecurity – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, announced its support of October’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) with a campaign to educate organizations on the importance of leaving nothing to chance.

A collaborative effort between government and industry, NCSAM was created to raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity. This year’s theme, “Own IT. Secure IT. Protect IT.” serves as a call to action to organizations on the importance of taking proactive steps to enhance cybersecurity practices.

Critical Start’s campaign leverages the messages conveyed by the national campaign to offer tips and best practices throughout the month of October. Through the Critical Start blog, social media channels and more, the company will share best practices including:

Own IT. Understand your digital profile.
Knowing your threat landscape is key in understanding your digital profile. From conducting risk assessments to evaluating security tool inventories, Critical Start will offer tips to help assess your threat landscape.

Secure IT. Secure your digital profile.
The key to effective cybersecurity is to quickly stop an attack before it becomes a breach. Leveraging the right tools and technologies are critical in stopping breaches and securing your digital profile. Critical Start will explore these tools, and how they work in securing an organization and preventing attacks.

PROTECT IT. Maintain your digital profile.
Incorporating penetration testing services is the best way to evaluate your security posture and determine how exposed your systems, services, and data are to malicious threat actors on an ongoing basis. Critical Start’s penetration testing team, will share stories from the front lines on what they’re seeing, and how organizations can use that information to protect their own infrastructure.

“As the volume of attacks continues to increase, the goal for any organization should be to stop an attack from becoming a breach,” said Rob Davis, CEO, Critical Start. “However, there are ways to prevent breaches, and we look forward to sharing those insights as part of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.”

About Critical Start

Critical Start, the MDR experts that leave nothing to chance.  The company developed the industry’s only cloud-based, SOAR platform that resolves 99% of security alerts to eliminate compromises and stop breaches. Our mission is simple: detect threats and stop breaches by resolving every alert for our customers. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio of end-to-end security services, including MDR and Professional Services. Visit www.criticalstart.com for more information.

PLANO, TX – August 15, 2019 – New distribution agreement expands reach and availability of the company’s MDR services to resellers nationwide – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response services, today announced a distribution agreement with SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a leading business process services company, to provide Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services to the distributor’s broad network of U.S. channel partners. Based on the principles to resolve every alert, provide complete transparency and drive mobile-first engagement, Critical Start’s MDR business grew more than 300% last year while maintaining a 99% customer retention rate.

Through the agreement, SYNNEX Corporation and its Westcon-Comstor division work with leading technology vendors to bring solutions to market through their extensive network of channel partners while supporting them before and during the sale. This agreement is another milestone in Critical Start’s ongoing strategy to rapidly expand its customer footprint across the U.S.

“Critical Start is an important player in the cybersecurity space, and we are pleased to help them expand their U.S. footprint,” said Scott Young, Vice President, Product Management, SYNNEX Corporation. “By pairing our market expertise and value-added support offerings with Critical Start’s compelling solution, resellers are able to better address this important market segment.”

Critical Start’s MDR services are differentiated by its unique cloud-based SOAR platform that ingests and investigates all alerts until they are classified as good or normal and can be safely resolved, resulting in a 99% reduction in alerts. Customers can access and see everything that the SOC analysts see – from underlying alerts through the investigation and remediation recommendations. In addition, the company’s MobileSOC app allows customers to communicate with SOC analysts in real-time to instantly triage and respond to security alerts from anywhere while its two-person SOCREVIEW process ensures the quality of investigations and playbooks.

The new distribution agreement with SYNNEX comes at a time of significant momentum for Critical Start following its recent $40 million investment from Sagemount as well as being named to the Dallas Business Journal’s Middle Market 50 and 100 Best Places to Work lists.

“Faced with an overwhelming number of alerts, companies are being forced into compromises by their managed security providers leading to unnecessary risk and increasing breaches.

This agreement with SYNNEX will play a significant role in rapidly expanding our geographic reach and sales coverage across the U.S. as more companies turn to our approach that resolves all security events and adapts to each customer’s unique needs,” said Alin Srivastava, Vice President of Business Development at Critical Start. “SYNNEX’s best-in-class distribution and logistics capabilities, combined with its cybersecurity expertise and a vast network of channel partners make it ideal for promoting and selling our unique MDR services on a national scale.”

Critical Start’s MDR service supports a wide range of leading enterprise security technology partners, including Carbon Black, Cylance, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and Splunk, among others.

About SYNNEX

SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX) is a Fortune 200 corporation and a leading business process services company, providing a comprehensive range of distribution, logistics and integration services for the technology industry and providing outsourced services focused on customer engagement to a broad range of enterprises.  SYNNEX distributes a broad range of information technology systems and products, and also provides systems design and integration solutions. Concentrix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation, offers a portfolio of strategic solutions and end-to-end business services focused on customer engagement, process optimization, technology innovation, front and back-office automation and business transformation to clients in ten identified industry verticals. Founded in 1980, SYNNEX Corporation operates in numerous countries throughout North and South America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.  Additional information about SYNNEX may be found online at www.synnex.com.

About Critical Start

Critical Start is leading the way in Managed Detection and Response. As the MDR experts that leave nothing to chance, the company developed the industry’s only cloud-based, SOAR platform that resolves 99% of security events on its own to eliminate compromises and stop breaches. Our mission is simple: protect our customers’ brand while reducing their risk. We do this for enterprises through our award-winning portfolio, from the delivery of managed security services to security-readiness assessments using our proven framework, the Defendable Network, professional services, and product fulfillment. Visit www.criticalstart.com for more information.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking, such as features and capabilities of products and services, security product offering expansion, technology trends, and general success of collaborations, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may cause the Company’s actual results in future periods to be materially different from any future performance that may be suggested in this release.  The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this release.

Copyright 2019 SYNNEX Corporation. All rights reserved. SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo, CONCENTRIX, and all other SYNNEX company, product and services names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of SYNNEX Corporation. SYNNEX, the SYNNEX Logo and CONCENTRIX Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. Other names and marks are the property of their respective owners.

PLANO, TX – August 19, 2019 – Hyper-growth MDR company adds cybersecurity industry expert Dwayne Myers as channel executive to expand nationwide distributor and channel program – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, today announced the appointment of Dwayne Myers as Vice President of Channels & Alliances, reporting to the company’s CEO, Rob Davis. With a focus on Critical Start’s MDR business, Myers will lead the expansion of the company’s national distributors and network of value-added resellers and other channel partners. Experiencing exponential growth, Critical Start’s MDR business grew by more than 300% last year, while maintaining a 99% customer retention rate.

Myers is an industry leader with more than two decades of security experience in channel development, sales strategy and business operations for both manufacturing and channel partners, ranging from start-up to international corporation. He was most recently responsible for growing the Palo Alto Networks partner business for their Cortex Platform across the central United States and Latin America regions. Prior to that, Myers ran the Connected Architectures Partner Development program at Cisco where he was responsible for over $1 billion in Borderless Networks business through partners in the southern United States and Latin America. Dwayne is also known for his success with the NEC America security business where he increased sales through the enterprise sales and engineering teams.

“Our success in the MDR market is driven by our unique ability to resolve every alert to stop breaches compared to competitors who compromise customers’ security by ignoring low or medium priority events to try and keep pace with the overload of alerts,” said Rob Davis, CEO at Critical Start. “As we expand nationally, Dwayne brings extensive experience building national cybersecurity partner networks that will fuel our growth and empower our partners with MDR services that offer compelling differentiation and value to their end customers.”

Critical Starts MDR services are differentiated by the industry’s only cloud-based SOAR platform that resolves 99% of security events on its own by utilizing the intelligence from billions of alerts investigated and more than 20,000 playbooks, which lets SOC analysts focus their investigations on true issues, unknowns and anomalies. Using a transparent, mobile-first engagement model, Critical Start’s MDR services support a wide range of leading enterprise security technology partners, including Carbon Black, Cylance, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk, among others.

“Managed security services are proving to be a new growth engine for resellers as they seek to combine their long-term relationships and deep knowledge of their customers’ business and infrastructure with new value-added services and recurring revenue models,” said Dwayne Myers, Vice President of Channels & Alliances at Critical Start. “As a company that started out as a cybersecurity solutions provider, Critical Start knows what channel partners need to be successful in terms of technology, business model as well as marketing and sales support so the combination of our approach and unique MDR technology is an ideal solution for partners.”

The addition of Myers as VP of Channels & Alliances adds to Critical Start’s momentum, including its recent $40 million investment from Sagemount, a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro and Westcon as well as being named to the Dallas Business Journal’s Middle Market 50 and 100 Best Places to Work lists.

PLANO, TX – July 10, 2019 – New distribution alliance expands reach and availability of Managed Detection and Response services backed by unique Zero-Trust Analytics Platform to resellers and customers nationwide – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response services, today announced a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro Inc. to provide the company’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services to the distributor’s extensive and growing network of U.S. channel partners. Based on the principles of zero-trust, complete transparency and mobile-first engagement, Critical Start’s MDR business grew more than 300% last year while maintaining a 99% customer retention rate.

Critical Start’s MDR services are differentiated by its unique Zero-Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP), which ingests and investigates all alerts until they are classified as good or normal and can be safely filtered out, resulting in a 99% reduction in alerts. Unlike legacy Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs), Critical Start offers complete transparency so customers can access and see everything that the SOC analysts see – from underlying alerts through the investigation and remediation recommendations. In addition, the company’s MobileSOC app allows customers to interact with the company’s SOC analysts from anywhere to investigate, escalate and remediate any issues without being tethered to their desk.

“Managed security services allow channel partners to be more prescriptive and proactive in their efforts when it comes to protecting their customers from cyber threats,” said Eric Kohl, vice president, Advanced Solutions, Ingram Micro. “With a proven managed detection and response offering, Critical Start is an exciting and innovative addition to Ingram Micro’s leading security portfolio.”

This agreement with one of the world’s largest and most trusted distributors is further evidence of Critical Start executing its plan to rapidly expand operations and its customer footprint across the U.S. Under the terms of the agreement, Ingram Micro’s Advanced Solutions organization will market, sell and support Critical Start’s MDR services to its network of channel partners and end customers.

“As we continue to win head-to-head against established MSSP and MDR players in large enterprise deals, the primary limitation to our growth is having sufficient geographic reach and sales coverage,” said Alin Srivastava, vice president of business development at Critical Start. “The agreement with Ingram Micro gives us a distribution partner with deep cybersecurity expertise and a vast network of channel partners across the country to help us capitalize on more opportunities.” 

Critical Start’s MDRservice supports a wide range of leading enterprise security technology partners, including Carbon Black, Chronicle, Cylance, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk, among others.

About Critical Start

Critical Start is leading the way in Managed Detection and Response. Our mission is simple: protect our customers’ brand while reducing their risk. We do this for organizations of all sizes through our award-winning portfolio, from the delivery of managed security services to security-readiness assessments using our proven framework, the Defendable Network, professional services, and product fulfillment. Critical Start has achieved the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II compliance certification and was recently named a CRN® 2018 Triple Crown Winner. Visit www.criticalstart.com for more information.

PLANO, TX – June 12, 2019 – Funds will be used to accelerate North American expansion and capitalize on premier partnerships with Microsoft, Splunk, Chronicle, Palo Alto Networks, Cylance, and Carbon Black – Critical Start, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response services, today announced a sizeable minority investment from Sagemount, a growth equity firm. Critical Start plans to use its first-ever outside investment to significantly expand its market presence for the company’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services as it expands nationally – including new field offices in Los Angeles and New York City – to serve enterprise customers and its network of channel partners.

Critical Start’s MDR services are differentiated by its unique Zero-Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP), which ingests and investigates all alerts until they can be safely filtered out, resulting in a 99% reduction in alerts that require attention. The Company also offers a MobileSOC application so customers can interact with the Company’s SOC analysts from anywhere to investigate, escalate and remediate security issues without being tethered to their desk. Underscoring ZTAP’s unique intellectual property and operational leverage, Critical Start has been named an MDR launch partner for high-profile security technologies including Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection, Chronicle’s Backstory, and Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XDR/Traps. In addition, Critical Start’s ZTAP and MDR services support a variety of other security technologies, including Splunk, Cylance, Carbon Black, and others.

“As more security partners and end customers recognize the unique value our ZTAP and MDR services add to their technologies, we’ve seen our MDR opportunities quadruple and our deal size triple compared to a year ago. This funding gives us the resources to accelerate our expansion and capitalize on the market demand for MDR services,” said Rob Davis, CEO at Critical Start. “As an employee-owned company, Critical Start was looking for a capital partner that understood the market opportunity and valued our culture and focus. Sagemount proved to be the perfect fit.” 

Critical Start’s MDR business grew by more than 300% last year and is on pace to more than double revenue this year. The Company was recently named by the Dallas Business Journal to its Middle Market 50 list as one of the fastest-growing midsize companies and was also named by CRN to its 2019 MSP 500 and Security 100 lists. The Company was a CRN 2018 Triple Crown Winner and named by MSSP Alert to its 2018 Top 100 list.

“When it comes to growth investing, the best companies are looking for a great partner, not just an investment,” said Michael Kosty, Partner, Sagemount. “As a high-growth, profitable private company, Critical Start was successfully attacking the market for MDR services on its own but sought to accelerate product development and partnership opportunities. The company plans to capitalize on the huge enterprise opportunity for MDR services, which aligns perfectly with our strategy of providing flexible capital and strategic assistance to market-leading companies with recurring revenue models in high-growth markets.”

DC Advisory served as the exclusive financial advisor to Critical Start. Financial terms have not been disclosed.

About Critical Start

Critical Start is leading the way in Managed Detection and Response. Our mission is simple: protect our customers’ brand while reducing their risk. We do this for organizations of all sizes through our award-winning portfolio, from the delivery of managed security services to security-readiness assessments using our proven framework, the Defendable Network, professional services, and product fulfillment. Critical Start has achieved the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type II compliance certification and was recently named a CRN® 2018 Triple Crown Winner. Visit www.criticalstart.com for more information.

About Sagemount

Sagemount is a growth-focused private capital firm with $1.7 billion in committed capital. Founded in 2012, the firm provides flexible capital and strategic assistance to market-leading companies in high-growth sectors across a wide variety of transaction situations. Sagemount invests in both control and non-control positions and will make equity and/or junior debt investments. Targeted sectors include software, digital infrastructure, healthcare IT services, business, and consumer services, and financial technology/specialty finance. For more information, please visit www.sagemount.com.

PLANO, Texas, Aug. 29, 2018 – Cybersecurity company completed a strategic acquisition to bolster Managed Detection & Response services this year as MDR business grows 300% – Critical Start, a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions, today announced that it increased year-over-year (YoY) revenue 87% in the first seven months of 2018. This rapid growth is driven by mid-size firms and enterprises looking for assistance to combat today’s complex and rapidly evolving human and machine-generated security threats. In addition, the company’s Managed Detection & Response (MDR) business has grown 300% YTD in 2018 when compared to all of 2017.

To support the significant growth in its overall business, Critical Start increased its workforce by 62% in the last year. In the coming months, the company plans to add approximately 20 new positions covering a wide range of expertise, including security analysts, software developers, penetration testers, solution architects, sales and marketing. To meet the needs of its growing workforce, expand its operations and support future growth, Critical Start recently moved into a new 15,000 square-foot facility in Plano, Texas. The new headquarters includes a state-of-the-art Cybersecurity Operations Center (CyberSOC) and corporate offices. This is a 500% increase from its previous 3,000 square-foot facility.

By offering a powerful combination of professional services, strategic product fulfillment, and MDR services, Critical Start is well positioned to protect important customer data and customer brands. Critical Start currently works with hundreds of mid-size and enterprise customers across a variety of industries.

Additional milestones from the first half of 2018 include:

• Completed Strategic Acquisition – In March 2018, Critical Start acquired Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), a next-generation security analytics platform. The combination of Critical Start’s CyberSOC, expert security analysts and the ATA platform allows the company to provide managed security services delivered in a completely transparent process using a mobile-first, Zero-Trust platform.
• Recognized in Several Industry Rankings – CRN named Critical Start to its 2018 Managed Service Provider (MSP) list in the security category. The company was also named to CRN’s 2017 Solution Provider 500 List, which is the publication’s annual ranking of the largest technology integrators, solution providers and IT consultants in North America by revenue. In addition, CRN ranked Critical Start #10 on its 2017 Fast Growth 150 list, based on its 234.13% two-year growth rate. Finally, in November 2017 the company was selected as one of the Dallas 100™ by Southern Methodist University for its significant growth over the past three years.
• Named a Palo Alto CPSP – Critical Start was named a Palo Alto Networks® Certified Professional Services Provider (CPSP). The program was developed to enable, recognize and promote qualified partners who have demonstrated world-class, proven professional services capabilities and cybersecurity expertise. Critical Start has been a platinum partner in the Palo Alto Networks NextWave Partner Program since 2014, having grown its Palo Alto Networks business by more than 30% year-over-year.
• Earned SOC Type 2 Certification – Critical Start achieved the Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Compliance Certification, a standard defined by the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA). SOC 2 defines the criteria for managing customer data based on five “trust service principles”—security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Earning SOC 2 certification reflects Critical Start’s commitment to security best practices throughout the organization.

“Critical Start is experiencing explosive growth in 2018, and I believe this is a direct result of doing the right thing for our customers and attracting the most talented employees in the industry,” said Rob Davis, CEO at Critical Start. “Our software development team has built a tremendous Zero-Trust platform for MDR services, which combined with our Mobile SOC applications make us unique in the industry. Our strategic product fulfillment and professional service business lines are perfect gateways to our MDR services. None of this is possible without our fantastic customer base. We will continue to listen to them and customize our offerings to meet their needs.”

DALLAS, March 15, 2018 – Unique Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) / Managed Detect & Respond (MDR) services company to be powered by ATA’s next-generation security analytics platform – Critical Start today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Advanced Threat Analytics, a next-generation security analytics platform. Under terms of the agreement, Critical Start will acquire Advanced Threat Analytics for an undisclosed amount in cash and stock. The acquisition is expected to close in the next 30 days.

In its most recent Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide, IDC forecasts the market for security-related hardware, software and services will reach nearly $120 billion by 2021 with managed security services representing the largest and fastest-growing technology category with a CAGR of 14.3%¹.

As the largest cybersecurity company based in Texas, Critical Start built its business on security strategy, assessment, and implementation services, but expanded into managed security services in 2016 based on customer demand. After investing in a security operations center (SOC), Critical Start partnered with Advanced Threat Analytics to leverage its zero-trust security analytics platform after researching existing SIEM services.

“We have won major enterprise deals against the largest legacy MSSPs because the combination of our CYBERSOC, expert analysts and the ATA platform offer our clients something unique – managed security services delivered in a completely transparent process using a mobile-first, zero trust platform,” said Rob Davis, CEO, Critical Start. “We’re excited to have the Advanced Threat Analytics employees and technology join Critical Start as they will provide clear and compelling competitive differentiation for us in the rapidly expanding market for MSSP/MDR services.”

“From day one, our mission has been to create a next-generation SOC platform that solves the industry-wide problem of security alert overload. Only when false positives and known good items are removed can quality MSSP / MDR service be delivered to clients,” said Alin Srivastava, President, Advanced Threat Analytics. “The combination of Critical Start‘s CYBERSOC team and the Advanced Threat Analytics platform creates an extremely unique way to deliver security services via our cloud-based SOC portal and the MobileSOC iOS and Android applications.”

In addition to offering MSSP/MDR services to its own clients, the combination of Critical Start‘s CYBERSOC team and ATA’s technology also provides a white-label offering for value-added resellers (VARs) and managed service providers (MSPs) that are looking for a differentiated, turnkey solution for offering managed security services to their clients.