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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)
32nd
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (28th)
Secureworks Taegis Managed ...
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
12th
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 July 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 0.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR is 3.7%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

JH
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.
Tom Kar - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a user-friendly setup process, but its query language needs improvement
The product has valuable features for the EDR section. We can easily isolate affected machines in the network. It helps us prevent the spreading of malware or ransomware further Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR's query language and stability need improvement. Additionally, its price could be better…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of their service is their tuning... If we were getting 1,000 alerts a day without them, they tune it until they know what to do for 999 of them, and one will make it through to us per day. That tuning is the most valuable part of their solution."
"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."
"The way that the user interface presents data enables our team to be able to make decisions significantly quicker, rather than have to dig into the details or go back to the original tools."
"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."
"The main difference between the other options and this one is the quality of the personnel within the SOC. It's their knowledge and depth and the way they handle customers."
"There are two parts of CRITICALSTART's services that are most valuable to us. The MDR solution where they monitor our computers, laptops, and users across the board; and their knowledge of Palo Alto firewalls."
"The new mobile app is awesome. It is one of the best I've ever seen. It's much better than its predecessor. It's more intuitive, a whole lot easier to navigate and get where you need to go. It's less repetitive and just generally easier to use. It allows me to not have to be sitting at my computer all the time. I can be on my phone or tablet or wherever I'm at. It makes it a lot easier to answer tickets and do that kind of thing."
"I also use their mobile app. It's very easy to use and very convenient to be able to respond to alerts wherever you are. I love the app. You can respond and communicate, per ticket, with their SOC in near real-time. The response is very quick."
"Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR MDR is a great product that has not posed any challenges from my perspective."
"The pricing is flexible."
"This solution gathers the information logs from all devices and correlates all the information. It notifies us of any critical events taking place across our networks which has been valuable."
"There are some patent pending detectors within the platform that provides a lot of value."
"The most valuable feature is the support. The support chat. It's always connecting to people. And you open the chat, and it's not about that automated response. It's actually a human being that responds to you."
"The most valuable feature is the fast alerting and response time."
"The solution definitely made us way more aware of the possibilities out there."
"The most valuable features are IDS and IPS."
 

Cons

"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."
"In terms of responsiveness, when I open up an alert, sometimes it takes a bit of time to load. However, it only happened once or twice."
"It has frustrated us that they don't have a native Slack integration, because most things do now. That's something we've asked for, for years, and it just doesn't really seem like it's a priority."
"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."
"The UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"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."
"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 updated UI is actually pretty bad. Regarding the intuitiveness, it is fairly easy to use, but the responsiveness, on a scale of one to 10, is a one. It's really poor performance."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see file integrity monitoring."
"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."
"We did a PoC of their next-gen antivirus product, but it wasn't ready yet. It was underdeveloped and caused a lot of issues. We'd like to move away from Carbon Black, but they said that it's probably still not to a point where we'd be happy with it. Carbon Black and RedCloak seem to work fine for us."
"Dell Secureworks could improve its integration with other third-party solutions."
"Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR's query language and stability need improvement."
"The integration would look better with other products, with other EDRs, with other firewalls, with other older versions of firewalls, and the versions of software and hardware."
"In terms of ROI, I'd be surprised if there is any investment return on the SIM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."
"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."
"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."
"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."
"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."
"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."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR is very expensive and could be more cost-effective."
"The pricing of Dell Secureworks is very reasonable."
"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."
"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."
"The Red Cloak agent is free."
"It is expensive but there is no better product than this."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR?
The most valuable feature is the support. The support chat. It's always connecting to people. And you open the chat, and it's not about that automated response. It's actually a human being that res...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR?
It is worth the money. It is expensive but there is no better product than this.
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...
 

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: June 2025.
859,579 professionals have used our research since 2012.