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CRITICALSTART vs Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 3, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CRITICALSTART
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
31st
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (26th)
Secureworks Taegis Managed ...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR is 3.1%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR3.1%
CRITICALSTART0.9%
Other96.0%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

JH
Sr. Manager, Security Engineering at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
The transparency of data in the platform is perfect: You see everything as they are seeing it
Their Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) engine, which is kind of their correlation engine, is by far and away one of the best in the business. We can filter and utilize different lists to build out different alerts, such as, what to alert on and when not to alert. This engine helps reduce our number of alerts and false positives. The service's Trusted Behavior Registry helps the provider solve every alert. The way that they have it built out is very intelligent. The way every alert comes in, it gets triaged one direction or another. If it is already a false positive, then it is still getting addressed and reviewed on a regular cadence. Also, true positive alerts get escalated to the appropriate personnel. Its mobile app is great. The ability just to be able to quick reference and see what's coming in when you're on the move or go. You don't always need to have your computer or laptop handy, because you can operate it just from the mobile app. It can communicate with analysts, which is great. The mobile app is great at affecting the efficiency of our security operations. Those guys are using it throughout the day, whether that be at the office, home, or off hours. Typically, they triage from the mobile app. Then, if an escalation needs to be done on a computer, they will pull out a computer. We were on the original UI for a few years, so the updated UI has been a refreshing change. It has significantly more ability to filter and translate data, then load that data. It is rather intuitive to click through for some of our junior analysts or interns, especially as we are starting to onboard and teach them different aspects of the security operations team.
reviewer2396166 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP International Business and Alliances at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Customers have found quick incident response and proactive security management through effective threat detection
Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR MDR is a great product that has not posed any challenges from my perspective. I am extremely happy with the quick response from the Secureworks team. After the Sophos merger, I look forward to seeing a better and more enhanced version of the product. The team does a phenomenal job with automatic maintenance.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"From where we were prior to going into them, the service has increased our analysts’ efficiency to the point that they can focus on other areas of the business."
"There is a team of people who monitor our traffic and processes 24/7, so if anything raises a flag or alert, it will escalate back to me right away. That's the most incredible part: Humans working behind the scenes 24/7 to monitor our networks."
"Customer service and their response are phenomenal. I would give their customer support a nine point five (out of 10). Our easy access to their SOC analyst, sales team, and leadership team instills confidence in me that they are there for us 24/7."
"After a year of using the service, our expectations have been met in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec."
"Out of all the service providers I've had to work with over the years—I've been here six years—CRITICALSTART is my favorite to work with."
"When I start thinking about if I were to try to light up a SOC, which I've done before and I have no interest in doing, it could be a million dollars a year or more to do that, and for what I am paying them for the managed fees, it's a steal."
"My impression of the transparency of the data is that it has good detail. It allows you to see how many events have come in, how many of those events have made it down to their analysts to review, and then however many from their analysts to be able to close out, have been able to been escalated to us. It's a good metric that we can share with my management. They see the value of what the SOC is bringing on top of what my team is already doing."
"Their Zero Trust Analytics Platform (ZTAP) engine, which is kind of their correlation engine, is by far and away one of the best in the business. We can filter and utilize different lists to build out different alerts, such as, what to alert on and when not to alert. This engine helps reduce our number of alerts and false positives."
"The initial setup was very straight forward."
"We can easily isolate affected machines in the network."
"The initial setup was very straight forward."
"It provides more visibility and more control over endpoints; it reduces the noise, clears things, and only shows things that are really important, so you can focus on investigation, response, and remediation."
"The advantage of using this solution is that the setup is done quickly and can be done in-house."
"Securworks' threat intel seems pretty decent, and they integrate with several solutions we have, such as Azure AD, so all our Microsoft 365 stuff is covered."
"The solution is great for managing alerts and dealing with them as they arise."
"The knowledge base is up to date and easy to use."
 

Cons

"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now."
"During the six-month integration and rollout, there were some bumpy roads along the way. There were communication breakdowns between the project manager, CRITICALSTART leadership, and us (as the customer). I expressed my displeasure during the integration in their inability to effectively communicate when there were holdups or issues. They were going through some growing pains at that time, but they have been right there for us ever since."
"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us. For example, if a locked account shows up, they could do a little extra digging to verify that the locked account was due to a bad password on the local system. They could just do a little extra digging within the Splunk environment instead of pushing it onto us to go do that extra little digging."
"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"They just did a user interface overhaul to the website portal that you use for troubleshooting tickets. The old one was fine. The new one is not intuitive and I hate it."
"The only thing I can think of that I would like to see, and I'm sure they could work this into a service pretty easily, is not only alerts on issues that are affecting my company, but some threat intelligence of a general nature on what's out there in the environment. That might be a nice add-in."
"The biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support. I would like them to further their knowledge and ability to integrate with those tools. They have base integrations with everything, and we haven't come across anything. They should just continue to build on that API interface between their applications and other third-party consoles."
"Tamper-proofing or tamper protection is still pending in Secureworks. Tamper protection will make it more secure. If I'm an admin of a device, I can uninstall an agent without the knowledge of the security or Secureworks admin. If someone gets hold of one endpoint with admin credentials, he can remove anything, and an organization will lose visibility. They need to work on providing more visibility across endpoints. A couple of times it has happened that the cloak agent is there, but it did not get activated, or there were some issues. The machine was restarted, but the cloak agent didn't run. In such cases, you have to troubleshoot. It is a big issue if a cyber attack is happening, and your machine is rebooted, but the events are not captured."
"Tamper-proofing or tamper protection is still pending in Secureworks."
"This solution could be improved with a higher degree of automation such as automated emails, triggers and defining the severity of the cases."
"The deployment could definitely be improved."
"This solution could be improved with a higher degree of automation such as automated emails, triggers and defining the severity of the cases."
"Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR's query language and stability need improvement."
"I would rate the scalability at 50%. We have been having a problem as we are shifting from a previous appliance to a virtual machine."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see file integrity monitoring."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as the expense goes, it's very competitive pricing and the services you get are almost like you have a person on your team."
"The pricing has always been competitive. They have always been good to us. They will make it a fight. They don't try to hide anything; it's always been fully transparent and well-worth what we pay for it."
"Overall, for what I'm paying for it, and the benefit I'm getting out of it, it is right where it needs to be, if not a little bit in my favor. For what it costs me to actually have this service, I could afford one internal person to do that job, but now I have a team of 10 or more who are doing that job, and they don't sleep because they work shifts."
"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"There are contractual penalties if their SLAs are not met. This commitment was very important in our decision to go with this service, because not having downtime is extremely important to us. The providers has not missed an SLA in the 18 months that I have worked with them."
"The Red Cloak agent is free."
"The pricing of Dell Secureworks is very reasonable."
"The pricing for this solution is reasonable. One agent costs approximately 270 dirhams/70 USD for one year. There is a reduction in cost per licence as the number of licences used increases."
"Initially, the cost was going to be something around $160 or $170. And eventually, I think they brought it down to $110 and they also threw in some endpoint protection platforms."
"The price is kind of on par. The licensing was comparable to other solutions. It's not particularly high or low."
"Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR is very expensive and could be more cost-effective."
"It is expensive but there is no better product than this."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Real Estate/Law Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR?
I would not say there is a potential area of improvement. I am also waiting to see what Sophos will bring in terms of enhancement. There is room for AI integration as the industry evolves, and more...
What is your primary use case for Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR?
The solution is used for threat detection and response. We generally use it for quick responses during incidents and to secure our systems.
What advice do you have for others considering Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR?
I would rate Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR MDR at ten out of ten. This solution provides excellent support and response.
 

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart
Secureworks Red Cloak Managed Detection and Response, Dell Secureworks, SecureWorks Taegis Managed TDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
RICOH, Owens and Minor
Find out what your peers are saying about CRITICALSTART vs. Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.