Cybersecurity Firm Critical Start Raises $215M+ to Grow MDR Platform

Plano-based cybersecurity firm Critical Start announced Tuesday that it raised more than $215 million from Vista Equity Partners. 

Critical Start has developed a managed detection and response (MDR) platform that helps companies identify, assess and respond to cyber threats in real-time, while also analyzing threat data to inform future responses. The company’s technology and security operation center (SOC) analysts use extensive behavioral data to automatically resolve more than 99 percent of security alerts.

In addition to the MDR platform, Critical Start’s Incident Response Team is also available to address threats with a company’s security team.

Critical Start serves hundreds of MDR customers with a focus on midsize and large enterprises. The company has increased its annual recurring revenue by more than 400 percent in the last three years as enterprises respond to the rising volume of threats.

Critical Start has also diversified its network across 90 channel partners via its integrations with third-party cybersecurity software providers such as Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Crowdstrike, Splunk, SentinelOne and VMWare.

The company said it will use the funding to scale the breadth and depth of its MDR offerings, reach a wider range of customers and grow its team of roughly 250 employees by 35 percent this year.

“Our goal at Critical Start is to be the most effective, easiest to consume and quickest to deploy managed detection and response service, and we believe this investment from Vista will help us continue to expand our differentiation in how we help protect our customers from cyberattacks,” Critical Start founder and CEO Rob Davis said in a statement.