Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security Reviews

It's the full gamut of everything I'm using for clients, and I'm in the process of switching all of them over to using Bitdefender GravityZone. It just has a lot more telemetry that allows me to monitor and manage my clients' security postures. 

Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security has a lot of telemetry that allows me to really see what's going on with the device. It's at that level. It's a deep view into the device; I can actually tell what's going on in regard to logs and things of that nature. One of the things that I like the most about it is the ease of getting into the solution and utilizing it. With other solutions that I've used, such as Panda, this has been really difficult. Panda's portal was not intuitive at all. 

With Bitdefender, I like the fact that everyone starts off with a 30-day trial. Any client that I put into the system gets a 30-day trial. I can even use it as a prospecting tool. I can go in and install it onto a couple of devices in the network, and actually see what's going on, and go from there. Even if I wanted to, I could turn it off and say, "Well, we don't need it."

The room for improvement revolves around understanding how to use it. There's just a lot of best practices packed into it — MSP best practice. They've got all this training that's available, but it involves stuff that doesn't really encompass the solution as a whole. It should be more straightforward and say, "This is what you need to do. You need to start by doing this, and start by doing that, then go here and do it." Those instructions are available, but you have to know what you're looking for to even find them.

It's not as simple as, "This is how you begin; these are the best ways to do it." I think they do need to do a better job at showing you how to use it — you need to be taught how to investigate. If something gets blocked, you need to be able to go in and see what's being blocked. How do you go about doing that? How do you know what's being blocked, so that you can go in and whitelist it? They don't do a very good job of that.

I've only recently just started using Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security. I've pulled away from Panda and I'm switching over to a Bitdefender.

I think it's fine stability-wise. The only thing I see missing is just a step-by-step guide for an MSP, but once you get it into the system, I think it's very intuitive. Once it's on there, if there's something going on, you'll see it. The dashboard will show you if there's something going on, but the problem is you can't really tell what you're looking at. There's a lot of stuff in the dashboard. The executive summary is a little better. It talks about things that you're looking for, but it could still be more clear. 

It's just this overall computer endpoint. I'm looking at it right now, it says "computer endpoint protection status." It's got all these things, but it's for everybody. If this is red, I wouldn't know whose client is red or who is in bad shape — do I need to go and check on them? I don't know what it is because it just shows an overall score. Not even a score, it just has this graph and the graph just shows an online. I guess it's referring to online computers because it says "computers endpoint protection status." Under "Antivirus", it just has this bar and it's green. Then, in the other one, it says "online." Part of it's green, the other part's red — it's confusing.

I've been using it for a little while now, so I'm used to it — I know where to go. But the dashboard, in a sense, it's useless. The executive summary is a little bit better, but once again, it doesn't give you an overview of all your clients. As soon as it comes up, it automatically defaults to your first client, and then you got to go down into each one of them to see it. I'd rather see a list of all of my clients, and maybe a risk score. The dashboard should be flexible; it should show a risk score, etc. Then I could easily see if a client is in good shape or not. 

They've got a compliance thing in here too, but I'd rather just see it, per client. Then I could see who's out of compliance. Why are they out of compliance? Let me go in here and see what's going on. It would give me more of a day-to-day thing to look at — to make sure all my clients are in compliance. I want to see green across the board, but I don't want to see green everywhere. I have no clue what's going on.

It's a behemoth. It can do a lot. The only thing I see that's wrong with it is just the ability to get a good grasp of what's going on in our system. What I mean is that Bitdefender has so much to offer in defense-in-depth/layered security approach, that it is easy to get lost in the platform.  You must first know what you need and how to find it.  I think it is best to create an SOP for investigations or forensics, instead of just jumping into the platform because it can be a bit frustrating when you are looking for something and you don't know where it is located. 

I haven't had much of a problem with technical support. I haven't worked with them that much, but their tech support is fine, especially if you get the right person. There was one guy that I spoke with who's tied to my account manager. He was very comprehensive. He was very, very helpful. I was able to really get some questions answered. 

I have a situation right now. There's a video game that I've been playing for years. But now that I've switched over to Bitdefender, it blocks it, but I don't know what it's blocking. The problem isn't that it blocks it. I don't know what it's blocking. I know what's blocking it. Anyway, tech support helped me with this, but still, I don't know exactly what it's blocking. To be honest, this makes me miss Panda.

If Panda blocked something, no matter what it was, it would show me what it blocked. If it blocked something, it would pop up and say it blocked this. With Bitdefender, it just blocks something and I don't have a clue as to what is blocked.

It's been a learning curve for me. Technical support showed me a few things that I can do, and I've gotten closer to it. It's just a matter of working with tech support to understand it, but I'm getting there. I can't say that's a negative thing against them.

I used to use Panda. 

Panda is much worse, but overall, I liked Panda. Once you get into it, it's fine, but logging into it can be extremely frustrating. 

Every time my client would call me for help, I just dreaded logging into it. I am not referring to two-factor authentication, I've got that with Bitdefender as well — I don't mind that at all. Just getting to the screen. If anything changed on that screen, I had to go and call support and say, "What's my link to get into it again?" It was a pain to even get ahold of their support. It's not very intuitive at all. 

With Bitdefender, there's a support button right in front of you. I can click on it and put in a ticket. With Panda, it's often a little hidden.

The initial setup is a bit complex.

There are 20 different things on the left-hand side that you can click on, and no guidance of where to go first. I saw some stuff on there and it said to add a new client, use "packages." So, you go to "packages", and one of the questions in packages is, what company? I really should have started with "companies", but it doesn't show you that.

It's not very intuitive. It doesn't tell you how to set it up, step by step. They need more of a step-by-step guide of what an MSP should on a daily basis.

Bitdefender GravityZone Enterprise Security is roughly a general security solution, but they offer other services, too. The general basic price is roughly $1.20 for a license with Bitdefender. With Panda, I think it's $1. Although, I think they just recently upped the price to almost $2.

With Bitdefender, I don't need to add on anything extra for what I'm doing. You have the option to add on the exchange server, and BitLocker, etc. For general security, it's just  $1.20.

My advice is to make sure you get your ducks in a row and understand the stages you need to go through to actually implement it into a client's office. Practice the steps you have to go through. It's not a straightforward, step-by-step process. You've got to go to "companies",  create a company, then go into "packages", and create a package. You also have to create a policy.

You can create generic policies or individual policies for each client. I recommend creating policies for individual clients, but you can also create a generic one and just duplicate it for each client and then adjust it. In short, got to "policy", create a generic policy, and then go to "packages" and create a package. In "packages", it's going to ask you about your customer, so you already have to have a company created.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

If you're an MSP, it may not be as intuitive for you. I am looking for something to give me as much telemetry as I can get. I think that Bitdefender does that. There's a lot of information in here.