CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Bitdefender vs Kroll

Bitdefender provides cybersecurity solutions to small and medium businesses, mid-market enterprises and consumers. Kroll is a global financial and risk advisory firm. CISO Tribune files both under MDR and managed SOC. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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  • Bitdefender
  • Kroll
Bitdefender vs Kroll: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
BitdefenderBitdefender provides cybersecurity solutions to small and medium businesses, mid-market enterprises and consumers.bitdefender.comKrollKroll is a global financial and risk advisory firm.kroll.com
What it sells
  • GravityZone PHASR[10]Hardening and attack surface reduction.
  • GravityZone MSP Security Solutions[14]Multi-tiered security for managed service providers.
  • Enterprise Security Risk Management[7]A Kroll team for proactive threat and risk mitigation and crisis response.
  • Kroll Responder MDR[1][5]Managed detection and response with 24/7 security monitoring.
  • Cyber Risk Retainer[1][5]A retainer with credits usable across Kroll's professional services portfolio.
  • Cybersecurity Risk Assessments[16]Reviews of an information security program using the NIST Cybersecurity framework as guidance.
  • Complex Digital Events[15]Bespoke services for complex incident response, regulatory investigations and litigation support.
  • Enterprise Risk Retainer[14]A retainer for cyber insurance partners and their clients.
  • AI Report Validation[18]Independent verification of AI-generated research by investigators.
Categories
Headquarters
Bucharest, Romania[2][4]New York, United States[2][10][12]
Founded
2001[2][4][10][13]Not stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • September 23, 2026Bitdefender announced GravityZone AI Visibility and Control, a solution giving organizations and MSPs visibility into employee AI tool usage and the ability to reduce related risks.[17]
  • May 6, 2026Bitdefender appointed Frank Koelmel as Chief Revenue Officer of its Business Solutions Group.[7]
  • August 31, 2026Kroll launched APEX, a capability on the CrowdStrike Falcon platform that quantifies effort, cost and value of AI and automation for cyber investment decisions.[11]
  • July 15, 2026Kroll acquired ABC economics, an economics and competition advisory firm headquartered in Berlin, Germany.[12]
  • January 29, 2026Kroll launched two new practices, Kroll Economics and Decision Intelligence.[9]
  • November 17, 2025Kroll completed its acquisition of Madison Pacific, a corporate trust and agency services specialist headquartered in Hong Kong.[10]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: listed, seen November 4, 2026[8]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[13]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
From its own pages, Bitdefender sells mainly to small and medium businesses, mid-market enterprises and consumers. Its business group says it serves businesses, government entities, and non-profit organizations in industries worldwide. Its small business products are positioned for small teams with no dedicated IT staff. Managed Service Providers are a named customer type, with licensing based on monthly usage.Kroll supports thousands of law firms and corporate cyber clients. Kroll's Cyber Insurance Services Team serves carriers, brokers, breach counsel and policyholders. Kroll offers a baseline review aimed at small and medium businesses. Kroll performs security assessments for global clients from nearly every industry and government agency. Kroll's M&A advisory team works with public corporations, private equity investors, financial sponsors, family-owned businesses and other private companies in middle-market transactions.
Last verified
September 27, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Bitdefender and Kroll are both filed under MDR and managed SOC.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Bitdefender's primary category is EDR and XDR; Kroll's is Incident response and forensics.
  • Bitdefender is also filed under Endpoint protection platforms.
  • Bitdefender lists GravityZone PHASR and GravityZone MSP Security Solutions. Kroll lists Enterprise Security Risk Management, Kroll Responder MDR, Cyber Risk Retainer, Cybersecurity Risk Assessments, Complex Digital Events and 2 more.
  • Bitdefender is headquartered in Bucharest, Romania. Kroll is headquartered in New York, United States.
  • Bitdefender was founded in 2001.

What it sells: Bitdefender

What GravityZone PHASR does[10]
Proactively hardens defenses and reduces the attack surface. PHASR stands for Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction.

What it sells: Kroll

What Enterprise Security Risk Management does[7]
Kroll's global Enterprise Security Risk Management team works on proactive threat and risk mitigation and reacts to crises, offering personnel, expertise, advisory and bandwidth. Kroll's Threat Life Cycle Management uses end-to-end cyber and physical risk solutions to uncover exposures, validate defenses, implement new or updated controls and fine-tune detections. Kroll describes itself as senior advisers to clients on all security and threat-related issues.
What Kroll Responder MDR does[1][5]
Kroll Responder MDR delivers 24/7 security monitoring and response that includes understanding the root cause, hunting for further evidence of compromise and eradication. Kroll Responder MDR for Microsoft provides enriched MDR for Microsoft Security. Kroll offers a complimentary $1 million incident protection service warranty with no vendor-specific hardware requirement.
What Cyber Risk Retainer does[1][5]
Kroll offers a Cyber Risk Retainer with credits that can be used across its professional services portfolio. Kroll states that up to 20% of unused services credit may be applied to the following year upon renewal. Kroll's retainer includes access to a global team of 700+ incident response, litigation and breach notification experts.
What Cybersecurity Risk Assessments does[16]
Kroll's Cybersecurity Risk Assessments include a detailed review of the information security program, from policies and procedures to technical controls, including people, processes and technologies. At the conclusion of an assessment, clients receive a summary report designed to communicate security posture to senior management. Kroll offers a baseline review aimed at small and medium businesses.
What Complex Digital Events does[15]
Kroll provides bespoke services for complex incident response, regulatory investigations, litigation support, board-level engagements and national security matters. Kroll's Complex Digital Events services use a combination of non-practising attorneys and technical experts to guide and deliver complex investigations. Kroll provides forensic investigations and expert testimony supporting data breach litigation, trade secret/intellectual property theft and employment disputes.
What Enterprise Risk Retainer does[14]
Kroll offers an Enterprise Risk Retainer to cyber insurance partners and their clients. The retainer includes a pre-negotiated agreement for instant access to risk expertise. The retainer includes service credits to proactively strengthen risk posture before an incident occurs.
What AI Report Validation does[18]
Kroll's AI Report Validation practice centers investigators who deconstruct AI-generated narratives, test their claims against professional-grade sources and determine what was fabricated, distorted or omitted. Kroll conducts original research to fill gaps.

Questions about Bitdefender and Kroll

What do Bitdefender and Kroll sell?
Bitdefender sells GravityZone PHASR and GravityZone MSP Security Solutions. Kroll sells Enterprise Security Risk Management, Kroll Responder MDR, Cyber Risk Retainer, Cybersecurity Risk Assessments, Complex Digital Events and 2 more.
Are Bitdefender and Kroll in the same category?
They share MDR and managed SOC. Bitdefender's primary category is EDR and XDR and Kroll's is Incident response and forensics.
Where are Bitdefender and Kroll headquartered?
Bitdefender is headquartered in Bucharest, Romania. Kroll is headquartered in New York, United States.
When were Bitdefender and Kroll founded?
Bitdefender was founded in 2001.
Who are Bitdefender and Kroll sold to?
From its own pages, Bitdefender sells mainly to small and medium businesses, mid-market enterprises and consumers. Kroll supports thousands of law firms and corporate cyber clients.
What have Bitdefender and Kroll announced recently?
September 23, 2026: Bitdefender announced GravityZone AI Visibility and Control, a solution giving organizations and MSPs visibility into employee AI tool usage and the ability to reduce related risks. August 31, 2026: Kroll launched APEX, a capability on the CrowdStrike Falcon platform that quantifies effort, cost and value of AI and automation for cyber investment decisions.

About Bitdefender

Bitdefender provides cybersecurity solutions to small and medium businesses, mid-market enterprises and consumers.

Bitdefender says it has protected millions of consumer and business environments since 2001. Bitdefender states that it protects millions of users across 170 countries. Bitdefender says it collaborates with global law enforcement to dismantle cybercriminal networks. For enterprise customers, Bitdefender offers a security platform or a managed service.

Bitdefender says GravityZone integrates global cloud-based whitelisting and hybrid machine learning voting algorithms to minimize false positives across endpoint processes. Bitdefender says it serves more than 40,000 businesses, government entities, and non-profit organizations in industries worldwide. Bitdefender says its unified endpoint security and analytics platform and managed services help organizations across client, server, on-premises, cloud or hybrid environments. Bitdefender has global teams driving innovation and growth across the GravityZone platform and cybersecurity services.[11][12]

For small businesses, Bitdefender sells security meant to defeat advanced threats like phishing, ransomware and fileless attacks without burdening IT teams. Bitdefender sells endpoint security for smaller businesses that covers file servers, desktops, or laptops, physical or virtual machines. Bitdefender Native XDR uses ML to automatically correlate and consolidate threat signals across endpoints, identities, apps, network, clouds, mobile devices and beyond. Bitdefender integrates Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) into Extended Detection and Response (XDR) for protection of all identities and identity infrastructure. Bitdefender HyperDetect enables organizations to fine-tune ML detection and stop advanced attacks at pre-execution. Bitdefender says Anomaly Defense uses AI technologies to build behavior baselines and spot anomalies with minimum noise. The Bitdefender GravityZone AI Assistant uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to simplify threat investigations by answering analysts' questions instantly.[1]

Bitdefender sells a service that uses 24/7 monitoring, technologies deployed at the host and network layers, advanced analytics, threat intelligence, and human expertise in incident investigation to remove threat actors from customer environments. Bitdefender says its security analysts keep eyes on customer businesses 24x7x365. Bitdefender offers a service that provides all the protections of the MDR service along with comprehensive dark web detection and response. Bitdefender MDR Foundations offers MSPs a Managed Detection & Response service featuring 24x7 monitoring, threat hunting and rapid response. Bitdefender Offensive Services provide organizations with Penetration Testing and Red Teaming services.[1][12]

Bitdefender sells a product to discover and manage public cloud configurations and identities to reduce risk and accelerate compliance. Bitdefender sells security for cloud workloads in Amazon that uses the same web console as physical, virtual, and any other cloud environments. Bitdefender sells external attack surface management that discovers, monitors and secures internet-facing assets, shadow IT, misconfigured services, and forgotten subdomains. Bitdefender sells a product that automates compliance monitoring and real-time evidence collection to stay audit-ready. Bitdefender sells email protection that combines cloud-native, API-enabled protection and a secure email gateway (SEG) in one solution. Bitdefender offers automatic patch management delivered from the GravityZone Console. Bitdefender offers operating system native encryption management for Windows and Mac. Bitdefender sells an on-device mobile security solution for iOS, Android and ChromeOS devices. Bitdefender GravityZone PHASR is described as delivering dynamic, personalized hardening that reduces attack surface without hurting productivity. PHASR stands for Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction. Bitdefender Advanced Threat Intelligence collects and correlates data from sensors across the globe.

For service providers, Bitdefender sells security for Managed Service Providers with monthly usage-based licensing and a single web console to protect all customers. GravityZone MSP Security Solutions has three offerings called Secure, Secure Plus, and Secure Extra.

Florin Talpes, Bitdefender's Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, founded with his wife Mariuca one of the first private software companies in post-communist Romania, which grew to become Bitdefender. Andrei Florescu is President and GM of the Business Solutions Group at Bitdefender. Bitdefender says it has been advancing AI in cybersecurity since 2008. Bitdefender says its technology is licensed by more than 150 technology and cybersecurity brands. Bitdefender says its team is behind over 540 patents. Bitdefender says over half of its employees are dedicated to research and development. Bitdefender says it has headquarters, research hubs, and security operations and sales and business centers across multiple continents.[5][6][12][15][16]

Bitdefender on the record

Sources

Bitdefender full record

  1. [1]BusinessBitdefender · bitdefender.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]CompanyBitdefender · bitdefender.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Bitdefender GravityZone Cybersecurity PlatformBitdefender · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]About Bitdefender: Innovation in Cybersecurity since 2001Bitdefender · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Key Findings from the Bitdefender 2025 Cybersecurity Assessment ReportBitdefender Business Insights · published June 24, 2025 · Tier A
  6. [6]Bitdefender Threat Intelligence Solutions – Bitdefender TechZoneBitdefender TechZone · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Bitdefender Appoints Frank Koelmel as Chief Revenue Officer for its Business Solutions GroupBitdefender · published May 6, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Bitdefender GravityZone XDR Reviews & Product Details - G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier C
  9. [9]Bitdefender Reviews, Ratings & Features 2026 | Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed October 23, 2026 · Tier C
  10. [10]Bitdefender - Global Leader in Cybersecurity SoftwareBitdefender · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Minimizing False Positives – Bitdefender TechZoneBitdefender TechZone · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]About Bitdefender Business Solutions GroupBitdefender · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Our Leadership Team: Driving the Future of CybersecurityBitdefender · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Bitdefender - All Business Products ListBitdefender · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Join Bitdefender. Protect the Future.Bitdefender · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business SecurityBitdefender · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Bitdefender Launches GravityZone AI Visibility and Control, a Powerful Solution for Securing AI Use in the EnterpriseBusiness Wire · published September 23, 2026 · Tier A

Kroll full record

  1. [1]Cyber riskKroll · kroll.com · published October 16, 2025 · Tier A
  2. [2]Kroll Announces Formation of Kroll Business ServicesKroll via Business Wire · businesswire.com · published April 20, 2021 · Tier A
  3. [3]Kroll | Financial and Risk Advisory SolutionsKroll · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Risk AdvisoryKroll · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Cyber Security Services | Cyber & Data Resilience | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Application Security Services (AppSec) | Cyber and Data ResilienceKroll · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Enterprise Security Risk Management (ESRM) | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Investigations, Diligence and Compliance | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Kroll Launches New Practices Leveraging Technology and AI to Accelerate Decision-Making and Achieve Competitive AdvantageKroll · published January 29, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Kroll Completes Acquisition of Madison Pacific GroupKroll · published November 17, 2025 · Tier A
  11. [11]Kroll Introduces APEX to Drive Measurable Business Outcomes from AI InvestmentKroll · published August 31, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Kroll Bolsters Global Economics Capabilities with Acquisition of ABC economicsKroll · published July 15, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Kroll Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features - G2G2 · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier C
  14. [14]Cyber Insurance Services | Incident Response Partner | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Complex Digital Events | Cyber and Data Resilience | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Cyber Risk Assessments | Cyber Risk | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Data Risk, Discovery & Litigation Support | Cyber & Data Resilience | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]AI Report Validation | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  19. [19]M&A Advisory Services | Corporate Finance | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  20. [20]Valuation Services | Valuation AdvisoryKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  21. [21]Business Valuation Services | KrollKroll · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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