Bitdefender GravityZone EDR Reviews

One of its standout features is handling configuration and security at the endpoint level. For example, users can't just uninstall the endpoint software out of frustration because it requires a secure key that only the administrator can generate. This gives you a stronger level of control compared to other solutions. If an attempt is made to uninstall it, the admin receives a notification and can take appropriate action.

I had a situation where an employee on suspension tried to tamper with the endpoint security. Thanks to Bitdefender, I was immediately alerted, and I was able to prevent any potential data loss. When the employee returned to the office, he no longer had access.

The solution also excels in periodic and on-demand scanning, which helps remove unnecessary or potentially harmful applications. Recently, one of my client applications was flagged as malware by Bitdefender. I escalated the issue to the financial application's OEM to confirm it was safe. They provided me with the SOC reports for the year, which confirmed there was no malware. After rescanning, the issue was resolved, and I had the assurance I needed.

A common challenge with endpoint solutions when it comes to response time and resource consumption is their impact on system resources. However, with Bitdefender, there were no issues with excessive resource usage, even on PCs with 8 or 16 GB of RAM. The agents are designed to work efficiently, ensuring that user performance remains unaffected.

It has the ability to remotely control user PCs and execute specific commands to ensure their security. However, this capability could also pose some concerns.

They need to improve the dashboard by adding a dedicated executive view. This view should provide executives with a clear overview of what's happening. Also, the UI needs to be more user-friendly, especially for entry-level employees who are not technical. It should include clear annotations explaining what each field or option does and the implications of enabling certain features. This could be similar to the guidance when setting up Microsoft Bitdefender on Azure AD, where the app provides detailed explanations of policies and their effects.

I have been using Bitdefender GravityZone EDR for two years.

It has campaign-based deployment and takes a week for POC.

Pricing is a major challenge, especially for Africa. Bitdefender offers a top solution with competitive pricing, essential when making payment decisions. The setup is straightforward, and there's no need to worry about infrastructure, as the solution has proven stable and reliable. The user onboarding process is also simple. However, we're experiencing some difficulties with deploying the MSI package. 

I'll start with pricing and then move on to response time and effectiveness. Bitdefender GravityZone EDR excels at quickly applying updates and patches, which helps protect against vulnerabilities without delay. When a new patch is released, it's applied automatically, keeping your security up to date without requiring manual intervention. The cloud-based nature of the solution ensures that as long as your endpoints are connected to the Internet, they stay protected and up to date with the latest security policies.

Bitdefender GravityZone EDR stands out significantly. From my experience with earlier solutions, the setup and usage of this product are much more user-friendly. While other products are available, what sets GravityZone apart is its competitive pricing, even when fluctuations in currency exchange rates occur. Despite some recent pricing adjustments due to exchange rates, the core functionality and value of the product have remained consistent. Additionally, its ability to manage threats, like backdoor mitigation, is robust. I appreciate their approach to maintaining quality while adapting to market changes.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the platform for endpoint security across Windows and Mac operating systems. We are also considering extending its use to Linux endpoints to ensure comprehensive protection across all operating systems in our environment.

The product has provided us with visibility into the traffic flow from endpoints and the ability to enforce security policies, helping us position for zero-trust compliance objectives.

Sometimes, the platform takes a while to allow connectivity on the Mac endpoints. Establishing a connection to the server and ensuring all the local machine policies are in place is time-consuming. Once all the pre-flight checks are done, access to the system is given. Sometimes, this process takes longer, and that's not a good use of my time, especially since I use a MacBook. However, I noticed that Windows users don't have that problem.

We have been using Bitdefender GravityZone EDR for five to seven years.

The product stability is excellent.

The technical support team is responsive. 

Positive

The deployment process is very straightforward. We use a hybrid deployment model, combining public cloud and on-premises versions. 

The product is worth the investment. 

The licensing cost has been manageable for our small team.

Since implementing GravityZone EDR, we have noticed improved visibility into endpoint health, detailed metadata collection, and better enforcement of security policies.

I recommend Bitdefender GravityZone EDR to others due to its portability across operating systems and ability to standardize policy enforcement regardless of the OS.

I rate it a seven out of ten. 

We use the solution as an EDR. We use it to encrypt hard disks. We also use its DLP capabilities.

Bitdefender is a well-supported platform.

The stability must be improved.

I have been using the solution for more than four years.

The product is stable. I rate the stability a seven out of ten.

The product scales well. We have more than 17,000 users.

We do not have any issues with the support. We are an enterprise customer. We get support in every country. We get support in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

The setup is straightforward.

The cost is relative.

Our company has a department that looks after the security requirements. Organizations must look at their requirements and select a product that meets their needs. The investment and support is big. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for advanced protection against threats for our endpoints.

What I have found to be valuable is after every new release of the solution there are more features. At the time that we bought Bitdefender GravityZone, it was their top solution. We went from their Enterprise version to Elite, Elite HD, Ultra, and now there is an Ultra Plus available. 

Overall the solution is working well, it can be a little intense and thorough at times, but I would rather have it be a little bit more thorough than not detect what it is supposed to. We have been running the solution for a long time through various versions and we have not had any viruses or malware breaches.

When comparing this solution to others it performs just as well as the majority of the top-level alternatives.

The whole suite is unlike most AV consoles, which will inform you when there is an infection or threat, for some inexplicable reason Bitdefender does not do that. The most you will receive is an hourly update or possibly if there is an outbreak that affects 30% of your machines, an email. There is no real-time alerting to inform the user there was a potential attack that recently happened on their system. They could improve by having real-time reporting which is important.

I have not had used the EDR portion of the solution to do any custom scripting to allow further advanced operations on the endpoints. From what I understand from reading the comments on reviews is that it is not particularly flexible in this regard.

Sandbox Analyzer is a feature that comes as part of the Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Suite. It will start automatically unless you want to manually submit something which I have rarely done. When the feature is in use I do not get a reading back from the analyzer right away, it lacks real-time functionality. For example, if I was executing an admin tool and it was blocked because the Sandbox Analyzer wants to look at it on my local machine, it might take 10 minutes before I can successfully then launch that application to use it. The time it takes to analyze the software is too long. We are busy people and we end up just turning off the detection to allow the use of the program.

I have been using the solution for approximately five years.

Bitdefender has been stable and reliable, there are a few key areas I always look for in an endpoint security platform. A few of them are, how much burden does it put on the endpoint, does it uses more than 10% of the system resources in order to function. If it does not then it is a pretty well-balanced client, it allows the systems to continue to perform at the appropriate level. If it catches a very high percentage of threats, it is doing what you bought it to do, and it does not give off a lot of false positives. However, in the EDR portion, you will receive more false positives, but outside of the EDR component with the client itself, if it has few false positives for viruses and malware detection that is good.

They have done a decent job with scalability. The way they have their policies constructed and the ability to manage them. 

I think that the biggest challenge for Bitdefender is simply to move out of the SMB space and really become an enterprise platform.

I have been in contact with technical support a few times. They are not the worst or the best. They provide an average quality level of support.

I rate Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra technical support a seven out of ten.

We previously used Sophos and I recall, Sophos released an update for the AV software that destroyed the AV software on every endpoint that ingested it. It was a huge debacle and it took a long time to resolve because it left the solution in a state where you could not repair it, remove it, or update it. 

The installation is straightforward, simple to understand and manage. 

Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra is less expensive than other solutions, such as CrowdStrike. We had a really good deal because it was their year-end and they were trying to do a lot of sales that week. We bought a three-year contract from them and the cost was approximately $17 per endpoint, per year. It is was a very good price. I have spoken to other people who have purchased CrowdStrike at approximately $60 per endpoint, per year. I have no complaints about the price of this solution.

I put a lot of weight on third-party benchmark reviews and Bitdefender always reviews well overall on the spectrum. They review better even when compared to NSS Labs, MITRE, AV-Comparatives, and others. Bitdefender and Kaspersky both typically are the two solutions that are at the top month after month. There are the new technology solutions that are raved about often, such as SentinelOne, Cylance, and CrowdStrike, but they seldom review as well when it comes to defined tests where they test X amount of malware or types of attacks. It has been much harder to get independent confirmation of the efficacy of the new next-generation endpoint solutions than it has been to get the efficacy of the old generation products.

I am currently evaluating CrowdStrike and we considering moving to it once our Bitdefender contract is done.

For those wanting to implement this solution, I would advise them it is worth it and to test it out.

I rate Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for the protection of the endpoint inside the university. We use it on the general computer or VDI.

The solution can analyze the endpoint's security problems if a cluster of compromised machines exists. Also, the Sandbox was very useful for trying to verify if some of the files received by our colleagues had viruses or malware. The different features are useful for the day-to-day analysis of the security infrastructure.

The interface could be improved since we have some tasks that are not easily understandable, and it took us time to understand why it didn't work. However, the instrument itself has no particular problem.

We have been using this solution for less than one year. The console is on cloud, and the cloud space is BitDefender. It is automatically updated, and we are using the latest version.

It is a stable solution. 

The console is in cloud, so scalability is not an issue. We have about 700 employees using this solution.

The technical support has been helpful both for professional services and support provided by the sales account we have in Italy. We have not opened a ticket before, so I cannot evaluate that process. Our issue was solved before a ticket was opened.

The initial setup was easy. We had some support services directly from BitDefender for starting up and roadmap activation. Aside from that, we completed deployment ourselves.

The start-up of the services was very fast, and we did it in a couple of days with a couple of engineers. However, the deployment was an issue since we could not deploy by network or use the instrument provided by BitDefender as we didn't have all the machines integrated into the active directory. Therefore we were compelled to go PC by PC to install. It was not the fault of BitDefender but ours. We have no infrastructure for managing the automatic deployment, which is time-consuming.

Evaluating the ROI for an antivirus that protects you from an incident is challenging. It may seem like there is no ROI, but the solution protects everyday activities. Therefore, it is strange to evaluate the ROI for an antivirus solution.

We bought 4,000 licenses for three years and received a 21% discount compared to our basic offering, which is about 100,000 Euro.

We compared this solution with Microsoft Sophos, Kaspersky, and Check Point.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. I would recommend it to others, who will find it useful depending on their environment or needs. We selected Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra from other antivirus solutions since we have a complex environment and requirements. It is a good product.

Maintenance is on cloud, but we have to perform maintenance operations related to the profile that we deploy on different computers and environments in the university. For example, if we have a legacy machine or other servers, we have to create a specific profile for them. We have one employee that works on the maintenance.

Our primary use case for this product is prevention, rather than just detections. The solution prevented most APT (advanced persistent threat) attacks at pre-execution stage.  

With Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra, we don't have to worry about our endpoints or attacks. The endpoint security was always a concern for our company the previous solutions missed detections and prevention, The solution prevented all types of file less and scripts based attacks using its Machine learning and tunable machine learning which is additional layer on top of machine learning, behavior based detection and 30 layers of protection that Bitdefender has to offer at no additional cost. 

The feature I find the most valuable the heuristic for malicious scripts and the component is called HyperDetect. This solution actually prevents file-less and script-based attacks at pre-execution where other solution such as Crowdstrike detects but not prevent. An example would be base 64 encoded Powershell script or command line .  With Bitdefender gravity zone ultra scripts are run into agent buffer before it execute to detect and block malicious script weather it is Powershell ,vbs , etc. 

The EDR Graphical user interface has improved over the time and is intuitive and less noisy as compared to other solution. I would call the EDR as Next-Gen in it space. It has perfect mapping to Mitre Att&ck framework no other solution is has a rich EDR like Gravity zone ultra. 

I have been using this Solution for more than 4 years 

Bitdefender Gravityzone Ultra is 100% reliable. 

It is highly scalable. It's cloud-based and you can deploy to thousands of machines with no issues. You can scale it as demand increases without any issues.

If you're going to scale, you will have to buy more licenses, which can take a few days.

I think there is room for improvement for technical support. Although they've been great, honestly, I do see a language barrier sometimes. I ran into a few issues with technical support. But, if you escalate your issue, you will eventually get the right person.

Before switching to Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra, we were using Trend Micro OfficeScan version XG. 

The initial setup was not complicated. We were up and running within a day. It's all cloud-based and the deployment agent is easily deployed. The agent can be deployed from the console it self , using email download link , the agent can also be customize to needs , and had active directory integration. 

The Bitdefender sales team is always willing to negotiate pricing and beat the deal from other vendors. They are highly competitive and eager to work with make pricing and licensing as smooth as possible.

Yes, before switching, we did evaluate several other options. We were looking for an exhibition product. So, we demoed a lot of different production cleaning solutions like VMware Carbon Black Cloud and CrowdStrike. Both were able to detect attacks but not prevent them, which was what we were looking for. 

Perfect solution , Please Test, Test and Test solution before buying, there is a lot of hype for Crowdstrike and other competitors but no one is even close to the prevention that Bitdefender gravity zone ulrta  could provide.  

I use Bitdefender GravityZone EDR for security purposes. 

What we appreciate is that Microsoft Defender is positioned as an intermediary. However, one area where we're considering a different approach is in terms of the insurance it provides. We have mobile device management in place, but we encounter challenges when adding licenses to desktops without active users. Some of our machines remain idle, running certain jobs with Bitdefender protection. However, I face a dilemma when it comes to applying Microsoft Defender to these machines because there's no user logging in with a 365 license to enable Defender.    

I believe it would be better if Microsoft Defender offered features similar to what it does. I appreciate how Defender integrates with Exchange, providing advanced threat protection. In comparison, Bitdefender primarily focuses on endpoint security, serving as a basic line of defense. There's room for improvement in terms of protection. That's my primary concern.

I have been using Bitdefender GravityZone EDR for the past six years.

It is stable. 

I believe it's adequate. However, I haven't had the chance to use it in larger deployments, so I can't provide a comprehensive comparison.

I used multiple solutions before moving on to Bitdefender. When I was with MSPs, we used to conduct an annual review to determine the most effective antivirus solution. We would then promote and deploy the chosen antivirus. Upon joining S2S, we worked with Bitdefender, as it was highly ranked at that time.

It is very simple to install and takes only five days. Managing it is quite straightforward. The portal makes it easy to apply policies immediately. In terms of maintenance, a single person is sufficient.

There are some differences. It's more cost-effective, yet it provides the same functionalities as Defender. That's why I've been exploring the comparisons. We pay for it annually, and it's a per-seat payment.

The solution is sufficient if you only need to safeguard your endpoints. It's suitable for that. I would certainly suggest this product to others.

Overall, I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10.

We deploy GravityZone endpoint protection from the admin to every in-office machine, every utility machine, and then to each work-from-home machine that that attorney or paralegal uses when COVID-19 gets bad. There is a weekly centralized review. There is also response to alerts.

The solution is basically a firewall, antivirus, and anti-malware. It's got a heuristic module. It takes a lot of the same core technology that you see in GravityZone, however, with a decidedly more consumer-friendly face. 

In an office building, there may be other firms on the same floor. In a couple of instances,  an attorney was trying to get a PDF uploaded to the court, or at least that's what he thought he was trying to do. It wouldn't work on his machine so he took it over to his partner's machine. It was a small firm, three attorneys. It wouldn't work on that one. So he took it to his partner's paralegal, and it wouldn't work on that one.

He brought it over to a paralegal from one of my clients, and it immediately detected it as malware and blocked it. That was a vanilla out-of-the-box scan from GravityZone. What's notable about this is the malware was pretty serious and it ended up ransomwaring both of those other firms even though they notified their IT people who went in and attempted remediation. They didn't catch it. We like that because this isn't just defending against network-based attacks, it's successfully defending against everything else.

The solution has better UI and better UX tools.

The standard policies are pretty good, right out of the box. We seldom have to tweak them. We have never had to make, and I'm speaking across probably 14 law firms in 2020, we've never had to attenuate for a specific device case like a scanner or a particular piece of software. On three occasions it did block some software paralegals were trying to install, which turned out to be malicious. 

We like the dashboard, the console, the reporting. It's very easy to deploy.

We're pretty strong on GravityZone. We have had zero penetrations across our entire client base.

We don't deal with very large organizations. We stay as far away from active directory and combined network typologies, as much as we possibly can. The way I explain it is we don't build our houses out of straw, we don't build our houses out of wood. Each user machine that piggybacks builds a stone house. 

We've cloud migrated everybody, however, it did not happen generically. We've used Google Enterprise or Box Enterprise, so good stuff. AES-256 at rest and AES-128 in transit. We only do scans on GravityZone covered machines via our contemporary APIs. We close every hole we can find. With people who still have servers, whether they're physical or virtual or cloud, and they're still active directory, and they're still 100% Microsoft shops, I've heard them complain. However, I don't care as it doesn't affect any of my clients.

For many, the problems come mostly when they start tweaking or short-cutting - particularly for patch management. A lot of admins will tend to bundle work that we don't think should be bundled, however, they tend to due to the fact that they're underfunded and undermanned. They've got to get all the patches up. They've got to get all the updates done. Therefore, they tend to tweak group policies associated with the active directory. Some of those customizations can create potential security holes.

GravityZone is the only one with the heuristic model, the simulator. We've seen where a thing may pass the script desk, it may pass the node and snippet test, however, it fails the heuristic test. That's where it launches a virtual machine in the high memory and lets the thing do whatever it's going to do, and then looks for where it goes. Of course, a lot of these things then go to the approval area as that's what the admin intended. However, then they get into a bit of a problem with GravityZone as it doesn't want them to do that. GravityZone works fine if you follow best practices in the other areas of your deployments. If you're kind of cheating or cutting corners, GravityZone isn't going to be mean to you, however, it may give you grief. 

I've used the solution as a consumer on behalf of clients. I've been dealing with the solution for four or five years at this point.

The solution is extremely stable. Nothing that I work with is as stable as this product. For example, aside from its default group policies and actions being robust and its very adroit awareness of 'allowable' (you can't get a Kyocera auto-update if you don't have a Kyocera), we log less than one issue per year per client for Gravity Zone.

The technical support is amazing. It's pretty much instantaneous. We've very satisfied with the level of service we are provided.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

We create a package depending on the level of sophistication of the user. The average law firm will have three packages. A low-end package, attorney, because attorneys are actually the least significant player in a law firm. They're the least informed. They're the least aware technologically. Then there are the standard paralegals and then advanced technical paralegals. We want to give more power to the advanced technical paralegals. Prior to COVID, we would typically create two or three distribution points, but with all the work from home, we quickly observed it was unnecessary.

For example, let's say you've got 22 users in an office. You can create two or three distribution points in your configuration of the GravityZone download package. Then, those three distribution points, which are serverless and have no central authority, will capture the updates and distribute those to the other machines. That worked fine pre COVID. Post COVID, with everybody at home, fully 40% of the workforce at home, that creates an unnecessary burden. That's why we've suspended that. 

We're using the UI you configure for whether the users are on a Win 64 machine or a Mac, and sometimes Linux. We build the package, send the package, install the package. When we put GravityZone on a machine we're building for deployment. It's all very quick and smooth.

When we're putting GravityZone on a work from home, typically it's a home laptop that has got a lot of stuff on it that isn't necessary. GravityZone installs in three phases. Phase one is a scan, a comprehensive scan. Phase two looks for offending software that is incompatible, such as McAfee. In home deployments, we very often watch it go through and have to unroot junkware. Sometimes that will take intervention on our part.

Although I can't speak to exact costs, in our experience, not only is it much more effective,  it also never costs more, and sometimes costs less than competitors.

The solution is targeted for the consumer community, however, I've seen it deployed a lot this year from all the work from home attorneys and paralegals and such.

I would advise those seriously considering the solution to go for the three-year contract as it'll save you money. If you're changing protection more often than every three years, then you're not really paying attention.

I would rate the solution ten out of ten.

We have problems with Word, we have problems with Google, we have problems with Google Drive, we have some problems with the Box API, we have lots of problems with all IFTTT. However, we never really have problems with GravityZone.