MDR Services for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Maximize your investment in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint with CRITICALSTART^® MDR

Critical Start built a managed detection and response (MDR) service with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that goes beyond monitoring alerts to helping customers see attacks across hybrid device types and operating systems. Our analysts and your own team can investigate the context of alerts and remediate the true positives.

Key Benefits

A simplified view of everything

Consolidated and improved visibility of your environment all in a single interface.

Reduce the noise

Get fewer false positives over time which dramatically reduces alert fatigue and analyst burnout.

Improve security posture

Our Cyber Research Unit (CRU) helps you stay ahead of the latest threats by building, enriching and adding threat intelligence to your security tools.

Increase your SOC’s efficiency and productivity

We do all the heavy lifting for you, so you don’t have to.

MDR Services Solution Overview

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How Our MDR Service for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Works

Critical Start MDR adapts to your environment to deliver the full power of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

Our bi-directional integration ingests every endpoint alert from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint into our Cyber Operations Risk and Response™ platform, where they’re compared against known good behaviors in the Trusted Behavior Registry^® (TBR) and playbooks auto-resolve known good alerts at scale. Alerts not matching the TBR are escalated to our Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts for further enrichment and investigation. Best of all, we can take response actions on your behalf, and we will work with you until remediation is complete.

Case Study

We have now been able to identify the risk and address it through a workforce that alleviates the burden from my team.

Global Information Security Manager

Read Their Story

Meet an SOC Analyst

Senior SOC Analyst Davis Kouk explains how Critical Start’s SOC delivers Managed Detection and Response services for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, including the ability to isolate hosts and add value with additional alerts that don’t come built into Defender for Endpoint.

How We Work with You

We’re with you every step of the way – from onboarding through maturity.

Onboard quickly:

We will get you up and running as fast as possible: 4-6 weeks on average with total time to first value of approximately 5-10 business days.

Personalize based on your unique requirements:

We continue to add value to your implementation by tailoring our MDR services to your unique needs through playbooks and procedures adapted to your environment to reduce false positives.

Investigate and resolve alerts:

Once you’re up and running, our platform and our SOC analysts will monitor your environment 24x7x365 for potential threats. You can expect to see an approximate 90% reduction in false positives on the first day of production monitoring.

Mature your Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Investment:

We want to help you get the most out of your Microsoft Defender for Endpoint tool so we’re with you every step of the way. Your Customer Success Manager will check in with you regularly to make sure we’re meeting your expectations and our MDR services are helping you achieve your security goals.

Why Critical Start MDR?

Resolve all alerts

Our risk-based, trust-oriented approach leverages the power of our Cyber Operations Risk and Response™ platform and Trusted Behavior Registry® (TBR) to address all alerts
We resolve more than 99% of alerts
We escalate less than 0.01% of alerts – the alerts that really require the attention of your security team

Automated security + control to help you focus on what matters

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is built on deep insights into operating system threats and shared signals across devices, identities, and information. Leveraging Microsoft automated alerts and actionable incidents, you can decide what to prioritize next on your Microsoft Roadmap and leave the research, false positives, and containment of infected devices to Microsoft and Critical Start.

Integration, the better way

Critical Start MDR services for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint leverage:

Cross-operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection as an identity provider, single sign-on, and user provisioning management
Microsoft automated alerts and actionable incidents
Cross-signal context in device timeline investigations
Ability to pivot directly to the device timeline from any generated IOCs

Goodbye portal fatigue

Comprehensive integration accelerates investigation and response with access to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint or Microsoft Defender XDR. Get Entities, Secure Score, Sign-In Details and related alerts—all in one portal. For each type of data source, such as email, identity and endpoint, we have built queries within this single portal so you can fetch other information for additional context.

Next-level expertise

Our security analysts are Microsoft Certified Security Operations Analyst Associates
Microsoft Security Best Practices are used to deploy Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to optimize Microsoft content for both Scheduled Query Rules and IOCs
We deliver 24x7x365 end-to-end monitoring, investigation, and response by highly skilled analysts

IOC Management? Hello optimized rules.

A key feature of the MDR service for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is IOC management. Microsoft is the fastest-moving security company today. IOCs are published and updated hourly across different locations. We manage, maintain, and curate MDE out-of-box detections and IOCs. Detection content is also mapped to the industry-leading MITRE ATT&CK^® Framework.

How we do it

We take every alert from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint into our platform and match it against known good patterns in the TBR. If there is a match, the alert is automatically resolved and incorporated into the TBR. If not, our SOC investigates and proactively responds to stop the attack on your behalf, collaborating with you to remediate in minutes.

Never miss a threat. Or your desk.

Take threat detection and response on the go with our MOBILESOC^® application to reduce attacker dwell time. An industry-leading first, MobileSOC puts the power of our platform in your hands, allowing you to contain breaches right from your phone. Our full-parity iOS and Android app features 100% transparency, with full alert detail and a timeline of all actions taken.

Need MDR for other Microsoft security tools?
Critical Start provides unified managed detection and response services for Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Microsoft Sentinel.

Learn More

MDR for multiple EDR, SIEM, and XDR tools

We offer MDR services for multiple tools, all supported by our Cyber Operations Risk and Reduction™ platform and accessible on the go through our MobileSOC app, making these easy for our customers who work with multiple security tool vendors.

MDR services