Critical Start, the Texas-based company that built its own managed detection and response (MDR) platform, has hired Dwayne Myers, previously with Palo Alto Networks, as vice president of channels and alliances.

With a focus on Critical Start’s MDR business, Myers will lead the expansion of the company’s national distributors and network of VARs and other channel partners. Critical Start’s MDR business grew by more than 300% last year, while maintaining a 99% customer retention rate.

Critical Start’s Dwayne Myers

“Managed security services are proving to be a new growth engine for resellers as they seek to combine their long-term relationships and deep knowledge of their customers’ business and infrastructure with new value-added services and recurring revenue models,” Myers said. “As a company that started out as a cybersecurity solutions provider, Critical Start knows what channel partners need to be successful in terms of technology and business model as well as marketing and sales support, so the combination of our approach and unique MDR technology is an ideal solution for partners.”

Myers has more than two decades of security experience in channel development, sales strategy and business operations for both manufacturing and channel partners, ranging from startups to international corporations. At Palo Alto, Myers was responsible for growing the company’s partner business for its Cortex Platform across the central United States and Latin America regions.

Prior to that, he ran the connected architectures partner development program at Cisco where he was responsible for more than $1 billion in Borderless Networks business through partners in the southern United States and Latin America.

In addition, Myers increased sales through the enterprise sales and engineering teams for NEC America’s security business.

“Our success in the MDR market is driven by our unique ability to resolve every alert to stop breaches compared to competitors who compromise customers’ security by ignoring low-or medium-priority events to try and keep pace with the overload of alerts,” said Rob Davis, Critical Start’s CEO. “As we expand nationally, Dwayne brings extensive experience building national cybersecurity partner networks that will fuel our growth and empower our partners with MDR services that offer compelling differentiation and value to their end customers.”

Critical Start’s MDR services support a wide range of enterprise security technology partners, including Carbon Black, Cylance, Microsoft, Palo Alto and Splunk, among others.

Earlier this summer, Critical Start announced it had raised a $40 million minority investment from Sagemount, a growth equity firm. This first-ever outside investment for the company will be used to expand its MDR services nationally – including new field offices in Los Angeles and New York City – to serve enterprise customers and its network of channel and cybersecurity tech partners.