Bitdefender’s journey to the east

Paul Hadjy, VP of APAC and Cyber Security Services, talks about Bitdefender’s growth in the region.

In August 2023, Bitdefender completed the acquisition of Singapore-based Horangi Cyber Security to boost its attack surface monitoring portfolio and increase its presence in the region. Since the acquisition, both companies have also completed the integration of their solutions and are now focused on helping customers improve their threat monitoring and detection.

Bitdefender’s GravityZone remains the core offering. The multilayered security solution provides enhanced attack protection by leveraging an extensive set of systems hardening, threat prevention, and detection technologies, as well as machine learning and behavioral analysis.

Several weeks ago, Bitdefender announced the worldwide availability of Bitdefender GravityZone Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction (PHASR), the industry’s first endpoint security solution to dynamically tailor hardening for each user—ensuring that security configurations align precisely with user-intended privileges and behaviors and continuously adapt to shrink attack surfaces.

CRN Asia caught up with Paul Hadjy, VP of APAC and Cyber Security Services at Bitdefender to understand more about their plans for the region. Hadjy was previously the CEO and Co-founder of Horangi.

According to Hadjy, Bitdefender acquired Horangi for three reasons. First, it was for Horangi’s cloud security product, which is now available in the Bitdefender platform as GravityZone CSPM+. Next was the interest of Horangi’s services business which was mostly APAC oriented. Since the acquisition, its been integrated into Bitdefender's global channel network.

“Prior to the acquisition, Bitdefender did not have a very big team in Asia. They had lots of partners, but not a big team on the ground. And Horangi had 130 people spread out across the region. So, the third reason is they were getting a team through the acquisition and it enabled Bitdefender to grow the business and continue to sell the existing Horangi offerings under the Bitdefender brand. One of biggest positive indicators of the acquisition is that most of the team are still here,” said Hadjy.

Hadjy also believes the channel ecosystem in the region reacted positively to the acquisition as they believed Bitdefender would be investing more to grow their presence in the region and also on innovation, especially as the solutions became integrated.

“Bitdefender is 100% channel while Horangi wasn’t. But as part of this acquisition, we're basically almost there to being 100% channel. And I think that's an important part of our business which is working with and sort of supporting our partners. Because ultimately, we'll never be big enough to support all the end customers that we have. So, an important part of our strategies to invest in our partners, help them grow their business, and also help them sort of invest in the technical capabilities necessary to support the end customer, as well as in integrating things. We have plenty of partners that integrate our product with other offerings to provide a holistic solution, which is very powerful in a lot of cases, especially in certain sectors and certain sort of business sides,” explained Hadjy.

Growth in the region

Earlier this year, Bitdefender acquired a key division of BitShield to continue its expansion plans into the Asia Pacific region. The division acquired is part of BitShield Data Defense, a premier provider of cybersecurity technologies and services, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The acquired BitShield division is expected to be fully integrated into Bitdefender’s global operations, transitioning to the Bitdefender brand.

Apart from that, Hadjy also highlighted that Bitdefender is investing in Australia and New Zealand, which are proving to be good markets for them. Bitdefender has also been in Thailand for almost 20 years, with the country continuing to provide growth.

“We're also in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos as well. We do a lot in Cambodia, with regulated industries as well as some government work. Vietnam is a mix of some regulated industries, some government work and some manufacturing. It’s a tough market, but I think we're doing well there,” added Hadjy.

Interestingly, Hadjy believes that one of the most powerful offerings from Bitdefender's perspective is the different businesses it has. Specifically, Bitdefender has a consumer business, an OEM business, as well as the B2B business.

“In my view, with AI and a lot of the stuff happening in that space, data is actually the biggest problem. How do you get the data necessary to train the models effectively? And since we've been around for a long time, and since we are deployed not only on businesses, but also on consumer environments, and also through OEM partnerships, we have a lot of data that helps us make our product better over time. And I think a lot of the results that you see in public, kind of proves that as well,” said Hadjy.

“We're always up there in the top in terms of performance from a protection perspective. And even if you look at MDR, sometimes we're very close, if not number one. So, I think that is a very strong proposition of local team, great products, and then also being able to meet the regional compliance standards is really, I think, our top selling points,” added Hadjy.

With that said, Hadjy believes Bitdefender is going to be sort of competitive with customers to make sure that they feel like they're getting what they want out of the product and offering.

“We're growing quite fast in the region, and I think continued investment through acquisitions or through marketing or whatever it may be, will be a part of our strategy going forward,” concluded Hadjy.