There are a lot of features. I've demoed and piloted a lot of it through some of the programs and partnerships that I have set up with Bitdefender themselves. The reporting and the analytics are very important to me, but not everybody is going to have the same answer. Some people don't really care about reports or analytics. They just want it to protect them.
A lot of the AI that is running in the background that deals with the response on different detections is important, and the learning from the labs themselves is also very important. That's where they set themselves apart from others. A lot of the other products that are out there on the market probably have a lot more bells and whistles, but they are not necessarily directed at the heart of what MDR should do, at least in my opinion. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and in my opinion, if you're getting back to the basics and doing what its true intention is, they've done a very good job in comparison to others.
In general, just with the way the market is, MDR solutions are mainly for those IT teams that are very lean, and there is not a whole lot. It greatly assists in detecting and responding but in more of a managed setup so that your eye isn't caught doing something else, and something is happening behind your back. So, the intention is there, and it's a very strong solution. It works really well.
They're doing a really good job. The throughput and the response time can always be better, but there's already a solution out there. It depends on how much and what tier you want to be a part of. The way they're designed is that if you pay for it, you can have a turnaround time in a very short amount of time. If you don't pay for it, your response time is going to be a little bit less. That can always be improved, no matter what tier you're on. It could be in terms of tech support, or it could also be things like getting the reports and getting the summary back from the labs. When something is detected, what did it all entail? There are a lot of those things. It's not all in one, but all of those are different branches.
Another thing is the ability to reach out directly to somebody. If you pay for a very specific account representative, you do have a number you can call, and they can check from the inside for you, but for those that don't have the ability or the finances to have that license, opening up just for support and the ability to get in touch with somebody is always something that can be worked on.
I have been working with it for four to six months. I have piloted it and test piloted a few other things with it.
I know it is based on the volume and size and also on different multi-year agreements. There are different discounts applied, but I can't really speak about the specifics.
You can have Bitdefender themselves for management. They do offer several different options to have a hybrid setup, where the management is at the client's site, and they have the power to manage and decide what they want to do with different things it detects. They can also offload the majority of it or a certain stack of alerts to a managed provider.
I would rate it a solid eight out of ten. That's a pretty high mark. I've been around them and their engineers in the lab for a long time. I know what they're doing. I know where they're headed. Everything is pointing up for them. Their biggest drawback has been the part of the globe that they operate from, but they are expanding very significantly year after year. They are growing very healthily on the personal and the enterprise side, and they're stretching around the world more. That's only going to help them, but as it sits right now, if you were to go to Gartner or some other outside entity that provides feedback or surveys, they have always been middle of the road. They are always held back from other people in the US or North America. A lot of that has to do with where Gartner is located as well, but they are catching up. There will always be people who come out of nowhere and jump right to the top, but they don't sustain that or they don't last long. From what I have seen and from my research, they have stayed very stable and grown into many segments. They've always stayed stable. They have never gone away. So, they're a very solid provider.
