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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)
30th
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)
16th
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 June 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of CRITICALSTART is 1.1%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR / MDR is 2.9%, down from 3.8% 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 / MDR2.9%
CRITICALSTART1.1%
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

"In a given quarter, I get 589,000 security events and 584,000 of those get reduced by the service before they even get to me, so the alerts that actually come through to me end up being about 1,400 in that quarter, which is a 99.7 percent efficiency rate."
"It is a comfort to know that there is a team of professionals backing you up, especially in an area that you don't feel 100 percent comfortable."
"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 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 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."
"This has been a positive experience and money well spent."
"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."
"CRITICALSTART makes us much more comfortable with knowing someone else is watching our data and our systems and knowing that professional security people are taking a look at any issues that do arise."
"It provides more visibility and more control over endpoints. It reduces the noise. It clears things and only shows things that are really important. It only shows those things that need to be looked at or need to be investigated further. Other similar solutions give you a lot of alerts and other things, but Secureworks gives you a defined or less noisy view so that you can work or focus on things that are important in terms of investigation, response, and remediation."
"Secureworks Taegis Managed XDR MDR is a great product that has not posed any challenges from my perspective."
"The most valuable feature is the fast alerting and response time."
"The pricing is flexible."
"There are some patent pending detectors within the platform that provides a lot of value."
"The initial setup was very straight forward."
"We can easily isolate affected machines in the network."
"The advantage of using this solution is that the setup is done quickly and can be done in-house."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement with the new UI, and that's about it. I would like to see a more intuitive design."
"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."
"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 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 UI has become slower but it's not something I would call them out on."
"It costs a lot for what we felt comfortable to spend."
"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 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 deployment could definitely be improved."
"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."
"It would be nice if the solution were a little more affordable."
"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."
"Dell Secureworks is for higher-end customers and it's not quite as straightforward to implement or to get up and running as some of the other solutions."
"In terms of ROI, I'd be surprised if there is any investment return on the SIM."
"Dell Secureworks could improve its integration with other third-party solutions."
"Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR's query language and stability need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Secureworks Taegis ManagedXDR is very expensive and could be more cost-effective."
"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."
"It is expensive but there is no better product than this."
"The pricing of Dell Secureworks is very reasonable."
"The price is kind of on par. The licensing was comparable to other solutions. It's not particularly high or low."
"The Red Cloak agent is free."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Enterprise5
 

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: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.