Case Studies

W&W’s server team had been struggling with their current antimalware solution, which caused performance issues and organizational challenges for its fast-growing virtualized server environment. The team was on the hunt for a new cybersecurity solution that would eliminate the security performance penalty while staying protected. The goal was to find a new vendor to establish a multilayer concept of antimalware protection. The current antimalware solution was used for both clients and servers and was managed by the client team. Björn Beigl, Systems Engineer, W&W Informatik GmbH, says, “We chose GravityZone because the solution is almost completely agentless and is designed for virtualized environments. That meant the performance impact would be minimal. It also was more cost-effective than other solutions with CPU-based licensing while delivering advanced security features and easy manageability from the central console.”

When the pure technology group (PTG), an IT managed service provider (MSP), used to offer cybersecurity protection, the standard was to implement the client’s preferred solution. After all, the customer is always right, correct? Yes, but an MSP using multiple security solutions, such as McAfee, Symantec, Sophos, and Trend Micro, was getting complicated.

CloudSol and its clients had worked with a range of security solutions including Trend Micro, Sophos, Malwarebytes, Webroot, Microsoft Essentials, and F-Secure. Among the shortcomings were limited reporting, incomplete infection detection and removal, poor Apple user experience, and varied customer support. Those issues disappeared when CloudSol standardized on Bitdefender Cloud Security for Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

SFVG is using Bitdefender Network Traffic Security Analytics to analyze outgoing traffic flows in real-time. Using insights from Bitdefender Threat Intelligence, NTSA notifies the security department as soon as malicious activity is detected in the network. NTSA provides information on where the malware is located, and what the organization can do to deal with the situation quickly and effectively. In contrast to other security solutions, the NTSA appliance does not look at the content of the network traffic but focuses on the metadata. As such, the privacy of the organization and sensitive data in the internal network are not put at risk.

When a leading furniture maker and retailer tried to deploy McAfee Management for Optimized Virtual Environments (MOVE) antivirus on their servers, the project never got off the ground because of numerous installation issues. Plus, the company’s existing McAfee antivirus solution was delivering false positives, difficult to manage, and creating database performance issues. Adding to the complexity was the use of a separate Fortinet antivirus software to protect mobile devices.

A recent update of the Dutch law on Personal Data Protection and, in its wake, the obligation to report data leaks, gave TUI Benelux a specific and pressing argument to look for ways to improve on their current security logging options. “During a visit to a trade fair, we met Bitdefender,” according to Kip. “Their Network Traffic Security Analytics (NTSA) solution seemed to me an interesting option – it not only offered ‘inside out’ malware detection, but it also had the most comprehensive forensic logging capabilities on the market.”

MEOS, a fast-growing managed service provider (MSP), was growing weary with its previous Webroot security solution. Ransomware attacks were occurring one to two times weekly across the service provider’s customer base. MEOS technicians became skilled at removing ransomware and restoring workstations and servers without any data loss, but incidents caused between one-half day to two days of downtime for affected customers. Creating even more havoc, Webroot updates started causing servers to freeze randomly. MEOS addressed the issue by rebooting servers, which resulted in more downtime. Moving forward, MEOS tested several cybersecurity solutions, including Bitdefender, TrendMicro, Webroot, Sophos, and ESET. The obvious choice for MEOS was Bitdefender Cloud Security for Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

Mark Shaw, President, StoredTech, recalls, “VIPRE gave us the all clear even when endpoints were sluggish or showing other issues. When we tested Bitdefender, the alarms started going off immediately.” StoredTech also evaluated Kaspersky and Webroot but ultimately replaced VIPRE with Bitdefender Cloud Security for MSPs. In addition, StoredTech consolidated its previous Websense content filtering and Malwarebytes solution onto Bitdefender. “We chose Bitdefender because it was by far the most thorough with catching malicious software,” recalls Shaw. “There wasn’t any babysitting required and it was easy to use and low-impact on endpoints. It was clear Bitdefender was going to help us serve our clients better and build our business.”

The IT team at Tyler Technologies was spending increasing time on security management because its prior security solution, Kaspersky, involved tedious manual processes for policy administration. Plus, Kaspersky’s visibility and reporting capabilities were insufficient. In fact, it took over at least an hour to generate reports, slowing IT’s ability to identify root causes and resolve issues. When Kaspersky was removed from the list of approved federal security products, Tyler IT decided it was time to find a new solution.

Information security overall is, of course, of great importance to Yamaha Motor, but the recording of incidents, such as abnormal network traffic, also has a high priority. However, the existing tools for that fell short, which posed concerns as the company must adhere to strict regulations, such as the Japanese Financial Instruments and Exchange Law (also known as J-SOX), and the GDPR in Europe. Yamaha Motor Europe decided that it needed a more pro-active cybersecurity solution to tackle that challenge.

Enable Group tested alternative solutions from several vendors, including Bitdefender, Cylance, and VIPRE. When Enable injected 200 malware infections into the test environment, Bitdefender quarantined 196 and stopped three at run time. The final instance had no impact. Enable decided to consolidate its security environment onto Bitdefender Cloud Security for MSPs.

Banking was once regarded as a stable, often uneventful profession. That’s all changed with the rise of cybercrime. Consider Patria Bank, a regional bank that was one of five financial firms in Romania targeted by the Cobalt Group, which was attempting to hack electronic payment systems. Fortunately for Patria Bank, the cybercriminals tipped their hand and initially attacked a decommissioned server isolated from the rest of the infrastructure. Realizing Patria Bank would not be so lucky again, IT decided to evaluate alternative security solutions including Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra.

LOS’s prior cybersecurity solution, Webroot, was not consistently issuing security s to the IT team, increasing the risk of a breach. To address the gap, the IT staff would manually monitor the infrastructure. While this approach prevented any security breaches, it was a burden from a time perspective. In addition, the company’s prior patch management solution, Windows Software Update Service, was cumbersome to manage and frequently missed patches. IT evaluated alternative solutions from SonicWall, Symantec, Trend Micro and Bitdefender.

Aside from missing threats, Trend Micro proved difficult to manage and scale as the bank experienced strong growth. After evaluating several solutions, Commerce State Bank chose Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra Security to protect Microsoft Windows workstations, Windows and Linux servers, and VMware virtual machines. Their Ultra Security solution also includes Sandbox Analyzer, an endpoint-integrated sandbox to analyze suspicious files, detonate payloads, and report malicious intent to administrators, and HyperDetect, a next-generation security layer that provides tunable machine learning with advanced heuristics and anti-exploit techniques. The bank also uses GravityZone Full-Disk Encryption and Patch Management add-on modules.

During a routine update, Trinity University’s prior Sophos security software accidentally deleted protection from 550 endpoints. Trinity’s security team spent a day and a half manually reinstalling Sophos, scanning endpoints, and removing infections. After evaluating several solutions, Trinity chose Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security to protect nearly 3,300 Microsoft Windows and Apple workstations, Windows and VMware vSphere servers, and VMware Horizon View virtual desktops.

When the WannaCry ransomware attack swept the globe, IT staff at the Luton and Dunstable University Hospital (L&D) worked throughout the weekend manually shutting down external links, deploying patches, and running intensive scans. While they dodged disaster, IT wanted to respond more efficiently and quickly to potential attacks. The team chose Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise to protect its entire infrastructure, including more than 8,200 virtual desktops, virtual and physical servers, and physical workstations. GravityZone safeguards workloads spanning the hospital’s diverse infrastructure featuring, Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Azure, and VMware environments.

Keeping a security solution updated across an organization should be the easy part. It’s fending off constantly evolving cyberthreats that often is the bigger challenge. For HAN University of Applied Sciences, protection against advanced attacks, security administration, and performance were issues when it used McAfee security solutions. Not only did McAfee miss infections, but also during updates, HAN’s thousands of workstations and servers were frequently disabled or the updates missed certain systems altogether, causing them to lack the required level of protection. As McAfee was downloading and applying updates and performing antimalware scanning, workstation and server performance became sluggish and often resulted in hours of downtime for staff, faculty and students.

The company is one of the largest providers of medical and dental insurance and insures hundreds of thousands of federal government employees in the United States. Prior to Bitdefender, the company used Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) and Trend Micro Deep Security. As attack vectors became more sophisticated, ransomware and other threats began bypassing the solutions. In fact, one attack locked out 80 percent of employees from accessing their files for 13 hours. To address growing security concerns, the IT team evaluated Cylance, Trend Micro OfficeScan, and Bitdefender GravityZone.

This award-winning non-profit human services organization provides children, adults, and families with resources to help them rise above adversity. Serving greater New York City, the organization delivers juvenile justice, child welfare, early childhood and special education, and health services to 12,000 individuals each year. The organization was concerned that its previous endpoint security software provided by Symantec would not provide adequate protection against ransomware. Such a breach would compromise clients’ personal confidential information and interrupt delivery of vital services.

This global provider of positioning, modeling, connectivity, and data-analytics solutions with offices in 35 countries supports customers in agriculture, construction, geospatial mapping and transportation, and logistics with products and services that improve productivity, quality, safety, and sustainability. Security was once a regional affair at this company. As a global operation, they used separate installations of Sophos solutions for the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. The challenges were that security management was not centralized, policies were not always consistent, and security reporting and analytics were not easily shared. When IT wanted to consolidate the Sophos installations, it discovered the solution lacked the ability to centrally manage its far-flung global environments. In addition, Sophos was regularly missing infections, putting an increased burden on IT to manually resolve issues and restore data from affected systems. Sophos scanning also made workstations run more slowly. In response, IT evaluated and tested Symantec, Bitdefender, as well as a newer Sophos solution. Bitdefender GravityZone was the stand-out choice.

It was a Friday “tradition” at Barnsley Council. When their previous security product performed weekly scans of employees’ desktops and laptops, the machines would become so slow, productivity would nearly grind to a halt. The impact was so severe that town officials supporting Stage 2 of the Tour de Yorkshire road cycling race asked the security team to stop scheduled scans. Another concern was that ransomware attacks were bypassing the previous security product and encrypting file shares. It would take IT 24 hours or longer to repair affected systems and restore data while 200-300 users were unable to access their files. In response, Barnsley Council’s IT evaluated Bitdefender, Trend Micro, Cylance, Microsoft, and Sophos solutions. The winner: Bitdefender GravityZone.

A few years ago, Denis Muckensturm, IT Manager for Les Jardins de Gaïa, took a vacation he is unlikely to forget. Enjoying his time off 1,000 kilometers from home, he received a call from an employee who reported that files on several computers had disappeared or been encrypted. Working remotely with an IT support firm, he removed the ransomware. Approximately 60% of employees were not able to work for one day. After this experience, Muckensturm decided to replace the Trend Micro security solution.

BLDD Architects, Inc., founded in 1929, is a renowned architectural and structural design, master planning, interior design, building information modeling, and graphic design firm. When Dan Reynolds joined BLDD Architects, Inc., he was excited about increasing IT efficiency and agility with software-defined datacenter technologies. It wasn’t long though before he ran into a roadblock. BLDD’s prior workload-security solution was not optimized for virtualized environments. Eventually, he discovered Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security.

Great Expressions Dental Centers (GEDC) is one of the largest dental service organizations (DSOs) in the United States and operates over 275 dental locations in 10 states. Growing from 23 to 277 offices in 15 years, GEDC anticipates their growth to continue. Yet GEDC’s prior security solutions, including Viper, Sophos, McAfee, and Symantec Endpoint Protection, were presenting risk, performance issues, and operational inefficiencies as the company grew. Sophos, for example, failed to completely block the WannaCry attack. More recently, Symantec impacted performance of one file server so severely that IT had to remove the software, exposing GEDC to risk.

Advanced Cabling Systems provides customers with video surveillance, security and fire alarm solutions, as well as audio-visual, access control and network integration services. With six facilities in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, the company serves 3,144 customers across 24 states. One of the fastest-growing building security technology integration firms in the U.S., Advanced Cabling Systems had avoided ransomware attacks for years. The IT team knew this luck would only last so long, particularly considering the shortcomings of Trend Micro, its prior security solution.

Businesses want to verify that prospective partners are financially viable, with strong credit histories. Offering the industry’s most predictive scoring algorithms, Creditsafe helps businesses make sound, informed decisions about engaging with other firms. Creditsafe must ensure its information is secure from cyberattacks, while maintaining superior system performance for its employees and high virtualization density for optimal efficiency. The company’s prior security solution offered IT limited visibility and reporting about outbreaks. Its scanning of servers and laptops would also slow system performance and reduce productivity of users. To resolve these issues, Creditsafe conducted proofs of concept against a range of competitive solutions.