Critical Start Closes Fiscal Year with Accelerated Growth Amid Sharp Rise in Demand for its Technology-Based Approach to MDR

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.