The Challenge
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.
In addition, the company was dealing with security events every six months or so. This required time on the phone with McAfee support and efforts to restore machines after successful ransomware attacks like one where an infection locked files across 20 user systems at a retail store.
The company decided to move away from McAfee and evaluate alternatives, such as our partner enabled Bitdefender GravityZone, Microsoft Defender, and Fortinet. The goal was to find a solution that would protect every device on the network, including virtual and physical workstations and servers, as well as mobile devices. After conducting a proof of concept, the company determined Bitdefender GravityZone was the clear winner.
The company’s Network Manager explains, “When we tested Bitdefender in our virtual environment, which was the big security issue we needed to solve, it just started working immediately. It was sweet. We also liked that it vastly improved our database access speed. In addition, Bitdefender bridged protection of virtual and physical workstations and servers, as well as mobile devices with layers of security technologies in a single solution. That made everything so much easier to manage.”
The Results
Today, the company uses Bitdefender GravityZone to protect 4,000 physical Microsoft Windows workstations, Android devices, and 200 VMware Horizon View virtual desktops and 130 Linux virtual servers running on the VMware ESXi hypervisor.
Bitdefender GravityZone safeguards enterprise endpoints across the company’s primary data center and 160 other locations, such as stores, factories, and distribution centers. Some of the applications protected by Bitdefender include Microsoft SQL Server, help desk, and point-of-sale software.
The GravityZone CPU-based licensing option proved to be especially cost-effective for the company’s virtual infrastructure, which includes 10 hosts and 20 CPUs. With licensing by the CPU, the company can scale and add virtual servers without needing to purchase extra GravityZone licenses.
Cyber Security Solution
Antivirus Software
Industry
Retail, eCommerce
IT Environment
Windows Workstation, Android, VMware, Linux, VMware ESXi Hypervisor
Operating Systems
Microsoft Windows, Android, Point-of-Sale Software
The Results
Since deploying Bitdefender, the furniture retailer has been fully protected from intrusions and threats.
“The fact that we haven’t had any security events since installing Bitdefender speaks for itself,” says the Network Manager. “GravityZone has been rock-solid.”
He adds, “Not only has Bitdefender reduced the burden on IT but our users’ experience has gotten much better. Before, it would take a week to clean and re-image infected workstations, so their work was disrupted. Now, our users barely realize GravityZone is in the background doing the work.”
Another positive impact has been increased infrastructure performance since moving to GravityZone.
“Our SQL Server and the virtual environment overall began running far faster with Bitdefender,” explains the Network Manager. “It used to take several hours to run product information management processes in SQL Server. It dropped to an hour once we replaced McAfee with Bitdefender.”
Bitdefender has given the IT team increased visibility across the infrastructure while simplifying security administration.
The company’s Network Engineer says, “GravityZone’s dashboard makes managing our security environment easy and simple. We’re able to view what’s happening day to day and take action on trends or concerns before they cause any problems.”
The Network Manager adds, “For example, the tight integration between Bitdefender and VMware vCenter Server shows us our entire virtual environment and automates security workflows, such as policy assignment. We also have a full view of our physical environment so GravityZone truly provides a single pane of glass.”
With the success of the first phase of the Bitdefender deployment, IT recently activated GravityZone content filtering for mobile devices, according to the Network Manager. “Bitdefender has such a rich feature set to protect us on so many levels. It gives us a lot of confidence that we’re secure.”