Bitdefender aiming to support more regional customers with partners

“We just launched PHASR as a standalone product which can work on all customers and not just those using our endpoint,” says Paul Hadjy, Vice President of APAC and Cybersecurity Services at Bitdefender.

Following the launch of Bitdefender’s GravityZone Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction (PHASR) earlier this year, the cybersecurity vendor has seen significant growth and demand in the Asia Pacific region.

According to Paul Hadjy, Vice President of APAC and Cybersecurity Services at Bitdefender, the launch has been a big push for the cybersecurity vendor, especially in helping customers reduce their attack surface. Bitdefender GravityZone PHASR is the industry’s first endpoint security solution to combine dynamic, behavior-based security hardening with real-time threat intelligence to proactively stop ransomware and living-off-the-land (LOTL) attacks.

“We just launched PHASR as a standalone product which can work on all customers and not just those using our endpoint. It’s big focus on helping our customers reduce their attack surface, which helps them significantly prevent living-off-the-land attacks, predominant among major attacks,” said Hadjy.

With a new availability zone in Singapore, Hadjy pointed out that they can now further support Southeast Asian customers. Following a few other acquisitions, the cybersecurity company has now integrated all the products that have already been launched in the first stage under Bitdefender.

Apart from the standalone availability of PHASR, Bitdefender also announced Bitdefender GravityZone Security Data Lake and Data Lake for Managed Detection and Response (MDR), solutions that help organizations cut through alert overload and complexity by unifying security telemetry from multiple tools into a single, intelligent platform. The new offering simplifies security operations with advanced analytics and expert-driven response, delivering the visibility and efficiency of a modern Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) while reducing investigation time and total cost of ownership.

Working with partners

With the new solutions now available in the region, Hadjy pointed out that the cybersecurity vendor has not only added a few new distributors in new markets but also in existing markets to grow the business.

“Bitdefender being a 100% channel business, we really focus on moving our existing customer base from Horangi (which was acquired by Bitdefender) over to the channel. So, we're mostly done with that. It should be finished by the end of this year. And the region will be 100% channel and aligned with Bitdefender. So, we’re really investing in partnerships with distributors,” he said.

Hadjy also mentioned that the current focus remains on helping their channel partners grow, especially in helping them gain more traction and customers. This includes providing more training and learning about products and helping them grow within the ecosystem.

Ransomware still the top concern

Looking at the threats organizations are facing in the region, Hadjy pointed out that ransomware remains the top concerns, with Singapore being the most targeted market for ransomware.

Recent Bitdefender survey data highlights that 75.7% of cyber professionals in Singapore reported pressure to conceal breaches (the highest compared to other surveyed regions). 71% of Singaporean respondents cited experiencing what they believed an AI-powered attack. Meanwhile, 24% identified compliance navigation as their most significant challenge in evaluating security solutions.

“Manufacturing is one of the biggest sectors that's being affected. Because the ransomware lock-up is literally costing them money in production. It’s the same for healthcare and other sectors as well. So, we see that regionally, the needs of customers are focused around protecting against ransomware. Of course, our endpoint solution PHASR helps with it. Because of the way bad actors are attacking; by using living off the land attacks, they're not necessarily using malware. They're getting in, selling that access, and then using that access to use internal tools to do ransomware attacks, or even data theft, and then bring some of the data without actually deploying ransomware,” explained Hadjy.

For business email compromise, Hadjy highlighted the acquisition of Mesh Security, which Bitdefender made earlier this year, aligns with the solution provided.

“We see that as a very important part of all-size businesses, but especially at the bottom end of the SME, and then all the way up to enterprise. For Mesh Security, we've launched the product under our brand and are continually working on integrating the full product into the Gravity Zone platform, which is going to be done very soon. So, it's launched, customers are using it already, but we're just finalizing some of the integration pieces to integrate it into the entire platform.

Plans for 2026

Looking into 2026, Hadjy said the focus for Bitdefender will be continuing the initiatives they started this year, which includes broadening their product portfolio with PHASR.

“We'll continue to focus on launching regional compliance standards. We just launched Essential Eight, which is Australia's compliance standard. We already had some other regional standards as well. So, it's regional sort of focus support, and that also includes the data sovereignty side of things. We will be launching availability zones, for those that make sense from a business perspective, where the regions are government compliance standards. Then a focus on attack surface reduction to help companies reduce their attack surface, enable them to be more productive and spend less time on those types of things. That's one of the harder problems, security and IT working together to make sure that the right tools are available for the right people, and not available for the bad guys,” said Hadjy.

As such, Hadjy believes the product alone is going to be a big focus for Bitdefender in APAC in the future, because it makes it easier for businesses to reduce their risk, and it does it in a way that reduces the attack vectors for the bad guys, and what they're using mostly at this point.