CRITICALSTART Raises $40 Million in Minority Investment to Fuel Growth of Its Zero-Trust Platform and Managed Detection and Response Services

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.
PLANO, TX – June 12, 2019 – CRITICALSTART, a leading provider of Managed Detection and Response services, today announced a sizeable minority investment from Sagemount, a growth equity firm. CRITICALSTART 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.
CRITICALSTART’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, CRITICALSTART 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, CRITICALSTART’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 CRITICALSTART. “As an employee-owned company, CRITICALSTART was looking for a capital partner that understood the market opportunity and valued our culture and focus. Sagemount proved to be the perfect fit.”
CRITICALSTART’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, CRITICALSTART 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 CRITICALSTART. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
About CRITICALSTART
CRITICALSTART 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. CRITICALSTART 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.
Stay Connected on Today’s Cyber Threat Landscape
Thanks for signing up!
RELATED RESOURCES
News
Critical Start Named in Microsoft Design Collaboration for New Microsoft Security Experts Services
The collaboration has allowed Critical Start to leverage its expert use of Microsoft 365 Defender to...- News
Multiple Critical Start Female Channel Executives Named to CRN’s 2022 Women of the Channel List and Recognized as a Power 70 Solution Provider
PLANO, Texas, May 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Critical Start, a leading provider of... Webinar
Disrupting User-Based Attacks with Microsoft 365 Defender & MDR
Credential harvesting phishing attacks are the highest growth attack vector that traditional network...
RESOURCE CATEGORIES
-
- Consumer Education(40)
- Consumer Stories(2)
- Cybersecurity Consulting(8)
- Data Breaches(15)
- Data Privacy(43)
- Incident Response(2)
- Interview(51)
- MDR Services(69)
- MOBILESOC(9)
- News(5)
- Penetration Testing(5)
- Press Release(65)
- Research Report(10)
- Security Assessments(5)
- TEAMARES(6)
- Thought Leadership(19)
- Threat Hunting(3)
- Video(1)
- Vulnerability Disclosure(1)