Bitdefender originally introduced its MDR offering in late 2018, and today is adding two new solutions to it, which are aimed at customers with more advanced security needs.
Today, cybersecurity vendor Bitdefender is announcing the strengthening of their Managed Detection and Response [MDR] portfolio. Their initial offering, which has now been branded Bitdefender MDR Core, is aimed at the SMB market. The two new ones, Bitdefender MDR Advanced and Bitdefender MDR Enterprise, are aimed at organizations requiring more advanced SOC services. Bitdefender is marketing Bitdefender MDR Enterprise as the only offering in the market today that can provide its full range of services in one place in an MDR offering.
“Our initial offering came out in late 2018,” said Gavin Hill, Vice President, Product Marketing, at Bitdefender. “This is an update of that offering. Back then, we tied the MDR service offering to our GravityZone Endpoint Protection Platform. This updated offering lets the MDR be purchased in three different flavours.”
The first is Bitdefender MDR Core, which is the updated version of that product from 2018 which has been Bitdefender’s sole MDR offering until now. The MSP version of this is even newer, having been available for only about two months. MDR Core provides next-generation anti-virus, anti-malware, application and device control, host-based firewall and web control and endpoint detection and response, from one unified and cloud-managed agent. MDR Core pricing starts at $USD 6.99 per endpoint per month. The original offering also offered product and services separately, which has now been changed.
“Now we have one standard fee,” Hill indicated. “We have course-corrected based on what the market is looking for.”
The MDR Core market is focused on the SMB space, and unlike the earlier version, will reach that market more fully out of the gate by being available to MSPs from the outset.
“The MDR Core offering has been something that smaller organizations look at,” Hill said. “These smaller organizations don’t have the skillset or need for advanced threat hunting.”
The two new offerings, on the other hand, are aimed at larger customers where more advanced security is needed.
Gavin Hill, VP, Product Marketing, at Bitdefender
“We are definitely reaching upmarket with these two more advanced packages, which are designed for customers where more security sophistication is required,” Hill indicated. “Many of our MSPs believe these will have significant value-add to them. They do not themselves have the security expertise within the SOC. We’ve addressed this by spending time since we launched the initial offerings building up the SOC with really sophisticated threat hunters from three letter agencies.”
The two new offerings are specifically focused around MDR services. Bitdefender MDR Advanced combines Bitdefender MDR Core with proactive threat hunting, user-based analytics, customer-specific threat modeling and customized incident response playbooks.
“This provides customized threat modelling,” Hill said. “It looks at not only an analysis of attackers, but from an understanding of what’s important to an end customer from a threat modelling perspective. Different customers can have very different cares about specific attack landscapes and information that they fear losing. This targeted threat hunting capability in the MDR Advanced offering specifically ties to the SOC team.”
MDR Advanced pricing starts at $10.49 per endpoint per month. IoT monitoring is also available as an add-on service.
The top of the line offering is now Bitdefender MDR Enterprise.
“This includes everything, including the proactive monitoring and the full range of capabilities, including Dark Web monitoring and whale hunting,” Hill stated. These include phishing domain registry monitoring, intellectual property monitoring, integration with custom tooling and high-value and high-risk target monitoring, with IoT monitoring available as an optional service add-on. MDR Enterprise pricing starts at $14.99 per endpoint per month.
Hill emphasized that while all of the capabilities in Bitdefender MDR Enterprise are offered by competitors in the market, Bitdefender is the only place where it can all be acquired through an MDR offering.
“You can get some of this through point solutions, but as far as offering it all together in an MDR, you can’t get this from other MDR players,” Hill stressed. “Everything here can be obtained from somewhere else, but not all from the same place.”
Both of the new offerings are available now to Bitdefender’s MSP partners, as well as the rest of their channel.
“We are channel-centric and will be partnered with more upmarket channel partners around the two new offerings,” Hill said.
“The MSP market is an important channel for us, and we are seeing demand for more sophisticated capabilities,” said Steve Kelley, President and General Manager, Business Solutions Group at Bitdefender. “Bitdefender’s business has a long and storied business in endpoint protection. Increasing our focus on MDR is a very important pillar of our success moving forward, at a very affordable price for organizations of all sizes.”
