CRITICALSTART vs ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR comparison

Critical Start and ThreatLocker are both solutions in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category. Critical Start is ranked #28, while ThreatLocker is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.1. Critical Start holds a 1.2% mindshare in MDR, compared to ThreatLocker’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Critical Start users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ThreatLocker users who would recommend it.

CRITICALSTART

Read 10 CRITICALSTART reviews

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1,744 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

Read 9 ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR reviews

1,563 Views
1,563 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CRITICALSTART

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 11, 2026

CRITICALSTART and ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR are cybersecurity products. CRITICALSTART has an advantage in customer support and pricing, while ThreatLocker excels with its extensive feature set.

Features: CRITICALSTART offers intuitive threat detection and response, flexible management tools, and a user-friendly interface. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR provides comprehensive application control, a dynamic threat prevention system, and stringent network access control.

Room for Improvement: CRITICALSTART can enhance its alert accuracy, speed up UI response, and expand integration capabilities. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR could improve in reducing false positives, ease of rule setup, and better customization options for clients.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ThreatLocker's deployment process and customer support are streamlined and efficient, offering quick resolution. CRITICALSTART provides competent deployment options, yet its customer service lacks the quick responsiveness of ThreatLocker.

Pricing and ROI: CRITICALSTART offers a cost-effective solution with satisfactory ROI appealing to budget-conscious buyers. ThreatLocker demands a higher upfront investment but compensates with a strong ROI through its comprehensive features that enhance security outcomes.

To learn more, read our detailed CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

August 2026

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Helped 909,701 peers since 2012

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)

28th

Average Rating

9.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (25th)

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

9th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

8.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR	1.2%
CRITICALSTART	1.2%
Other	97.6%

Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Featured Reviews

Justin Hadley

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.

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Andres Plaza

President & Chief Executive Officer at OneconnectionIT

Enables granular control through Ringfencing and works seamlessly for us as an MSP

The most valuable feature is ringfencing. It enables us to only allow what needs to be allowed into the environment and keep out anything else. It permits applications to perform without accessing anything they are not supposed to. For instance, if an application tries to utilize the command prompt unnecessarily, it blocks this action while still allowing users to operate the application. Being able to let the user or the customer continue to use that application but block the application from using the command prompt because it is not necessary is great. Being able to inform customers about enhanced security from a zero-trust standpoint has significantly improved our sales. We are able to walk up to a customer or call a new prospect and let them know that we are going to keep them secure at a level that they have not seen before. We are able to explain to them how cybersecurity works through it.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"After a year of using the service, our expectations have been met in terms of services delivered on time, on budget, and on spec."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The biggest lesson is transitioning from alert overload to being at a point where we do have eyes on alerts, where every alert is truly possible."

"Outside of using the platform to manage alerts, the feature of the service that we get the most value from is being able to reach out to them and say, "Hey, we might go buy a SIEM," for example. They give us their overview of what's out there, what they've dealt with, what they integrate with, and what that looks like. That's been pretty powerful over the years for us."

"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."

"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."

More CRITICALSTART pros

"I believe it is probably the best around."

"Being able to inform customers about enhanced security from a zero-trust standpoint has significantly improved our sales."

"It's an important solution to have in order to maintain a strong security posture, especially as we're seeing things like supply chain attacks, where people are accidentally downloading malware from our vendors."

"ThreatLocker's support and Cyber Heroes have the absolute best support in the industry, in my opinion, bar none."

"I did a detailed search for two years, and ThreatLocker Zero Trust is the only one that does what it says it can do."

"Our customers now have the confidence that they can work without being impeded, losing access or getting compromised."

"There is a tremendous amount that is helpful, such as their recording, watching the systems, locking down the systems, and their training."

"We stopped two attacks so far."

More ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR pros

Cons

"They could dig a little bit deeper into the Splunk alerts when they feel like they need to be escalated to us."

"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."

"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 biggest room for improvement is not necessarily in their service or offering, but in the products that they support."

"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 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."

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."

"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."

More CRITICALSTART cons

"As far as an improvement regarding ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR, there are still some things that, out of the box, it would be nice to have a more fine-grained ability to create certain exclusions."

"We have seen a couple of approval requests come through where if the user types in a reason for why they need it, they'll get approved based on the reason versus the application that are actually required."

"The Cyber Hero Support is not as effective as it is portrayed. There is a lot of miscommunication in notes, which are very buried and not easy to find."

"We have not used it for long enough, but there are some things users have asked for, such as integration with other platforms for reporting. They want a single glass location to use all the tools."

"From an MDR perspective, the solution can have the ability to ingest logs from other sources, such as M365, firewalls, external sources, and even cloud SaaS-based platforms. This way, we can obtain a holistic picture."

"There are still gaps in the EDR when benchmarked against SentinelOne, but it's improving quickly."

"It would be great if they handled patch management, and I am aware that they are currently working on it."

"If there is any aspect to improve, perhaps affordability for small businesses could be considered."

More ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of other services was so insane that they weren't even an option."

"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."

"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 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."

"I've told CRITICALSTART that I think the managed service they provide is cheaper than it should be. It's a really good deal."

"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."

"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 is not so bad. My clients do not like it, but they are following our pricing."

"ThreatLocker is worth every penny and a couple more."

"It has been excellent."

"It is pretty good. We would have been one of the biggest partners in Ireland, so we got pretty good pricing at the start, and it is still competitive. Pricing depends on what we are up against."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

12%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

University

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

The pricing is cost-efficient and provides good value given the level of security enhancement it provides.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

There are still gaps in the EDR when benchmarked against SentinelOne, but it's improving quickly. The ability for ThreatLocker to digest the 365 logs provides an elevated level of 365 protection th...

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What is your primary use case for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

Our primary use case for ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR ( /products/threatlocker-cyber-hero-mdr-reviews ) is to reinforce a zero trust environment. We utilize it to avoid security faults and improve d...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART

August 2026

Download CRITICALSTART product report

Buyer's Guide

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

July 2026

Download ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR product report

Also Known As

Critical Start, CriticalStart

No data available

Overview

CRITICALSTART enhances cybersecurity through advanced alert management, expert guidance, and a user-friendly interface. It promotes efficient monitoring and response to alerts, utilizing a Zero Trust model for heightened security.

CRITICALSTART is designed for organizations seeking to manage security alerts and streamline monitoring processes. Known for its quick response times and efficient alert filtering, it integrates tools like Cylance and Carbon Black to offer managed detection and response services. Users experience enhanced security by focusing on critical threats while the platform's easy navigation aids in efficiently responding to alerts. Improvement areas include better alert prioritization, enhanced compliance disclosure, and smoother integration with third-party communication tools.

What are the key features of CRITICALSTART?

Alert Management: Efficient handling and filtering of alerts to minimize noise.
Expert Guidance: Insights for integrating SIEM and optimizing response strategies.
Mobile Access: Easy access through a mobile app to manage alerts on the go.
Zero Trust Model: Enhances security by minimizing unnecessary access and noise.
User-Friendly Interface: Seamless navigation enhances user interaction and response times.

What advantages and ROI should users consider?

Improved Security Confidence: Advanced alert handling promotes a secure environment.
Increased Efficiency: Streamlined monitoring allows focus on critical threats.
Expert Insight: Professional guidance enhances security strategies and operations.
Quick Response Times: Rapid handling of threats reduces potential impacts.

In industry applications, organizations use CRITICALSTART to bolster cybersecurity measures across finance, healthcare, and technology sectors. Managed detection services and third-party integration make it suitable for enterprises looking to optimize security operations and minimize alert fatigue while ensuring 24/7 monitoring and protection.

Critical Start

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR offers advanced threat detection and response capabilities, providing organizations with comprehensive security by monitoring and blocking unauthorized actions to maintain a robust security posture.

ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR enhances cybersecurity with its rapid detection and response, 24/7 monitoring, and features like ringfencing. It focuses on limiting application access to block potential threats such as PowerShell scripts and supply chain attacks. Users benefit from a significant reduction in workload and receive quick responses, maintaining robust security through a customizable allowlist and application elevation features. While the platform excels in security measures, areas for improvement include better integration, an intuitive authentication process, and enhanced customization options in user alerts. Affordability may be a concern for small businesses, and there is room for improvement in EDR capabilities compared to SentinelOne.

What are the key features of ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR?

Ringfencing: Limits application access to prevent unauthorized actions.
Rapid Detection and Response: Offers quick threat detection and response time.
Application Control: Customizable allowlist and application elevation.
24/7 Monitoring: Constant vigilance to address security issues proactively.

What benefits or ROI can be expected?

Reduced Workload: Cyber Hero team helps decrease security management efforts.
Enhanced Security Posture: Proactively blocks threats to ensure compliance and safety.
Quick Incident Response: Rapid reaction to threats maintains operational continuity.

In industries where protecting sensitive data is critical, such as healthcare, finance, and government, ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR is implemented to secure endpoints and servers. Organizations deploy it to establish a zero trust environment, manage administrative privileges, and prevent unauthorized software installations. Its capability to monitor continuously and control installation processes ensures reduced risks of cyber attacks, enhanced compliance with security protocols, and assures continuous support and incident response integration specific to industry requirements.

ThreatLocker

Buyer's Guide

CRITICALSTART vs. ThreatLocker Cyber Hero MDR

August 2026

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