Bitdefender, a global cybersecurity leader, today announced it has been named a Certified Leader in the AV-Comparatives Endpoint Prevention and Response (EPR) Test 2026. The independent assessment recognized Bitdefender’s ability to prevent and detect sophisticated, multi-stage attacks, blocking 100% of tested attack scenarios and achieving a near-perfect (99.3%) overall detection rate.
“Bitdefender GravityZone Business Security Enterprise achieved Certified Leader status in the AV-Comparatives EPR Test 2026,” said Andreas Clementi, founder and CEO of AV-Comparatives. “The product prevented every tested attack scenario already at the very first stage, before any threat could gain a foothold inside the organization’s network, and did so without generating any additional operational accuracy costs. It is exactly this combination of strong prevention and operational precision that enterprise security teams need from their endpoint protection.”
Bitdefender was one of 14 enterprise security vendors put through 50 real-world attack scenarios, using techniques such as obfuscated executables, malicious installers, Office add-ins, script-based payloads, and USB-propagated attacks, executed through frameworks including Metasploit/Meterpreter, PowerShell Empire, and commercial red-team tools. The company was scored on whether it automatically blocked each attack (active response) or surfaced actionable intelligence for analyst response (passive response) as threats progressed through three phases: Endpoint Compromise and Foothold, Internal Propagation, and Asset Breach.
AV-Comparatives evaluated Bitdefender GravityZone, a unified security, risk management, and compliance platform that delivers advanced endpoint protection, including endpoint detection and response (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), cloud-native security, and PHASR (Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction), a first-to-market dynamic attack-surface-reduction innovation. GravityZone provides deep security context around every detection and offers a direct path to Bitdefender Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services.
Bitdefender Test Highlights
- Perfect Prevention Score —Bitdefender blocked 100% of the 50 tested attack scenarios, stopping every threat at the first stage before it could gain a foothold in the network, with no scenario progressing to later attack phases.
- Near-Perfect Detection —The product achieved an overall Passive Response rate of 99.3%, giving security teams full visibility into attacker activity even where a threat wasn’t automatically blocked.
- Broad Attack Coverage —GravityZone stopped advanced evasion techniques, including EDR unhooking, AMSI bypass, DNS-based shellcode staging, and DLL sideloading, known tactics used by real-world nation-state and financially motivated threat groups.
- Low Total Operational Impact —GravityZone recorded a modeled five-year operational impact of $225 per agent, among the lowest of the 14 products evaluated. Testing found no instances of legitimate programs or actions being incorrectly blocked or flagged, and no delays were introduced into user or administrator workflows.
“AI is accelerating the speed of cyberattacks, making early threat prevention a critical business priority,” said Dragos Gavrilut, vice president, threat research at Bitdefender. “GravityZone stopped every attack scenario before it could progress beyond initial compromise, consistent with its performance in previous AV-Comparatives tests. When threats are stopped at the door, detection and response operate with less noise and far greater precision. These results validate our approach: a prevention-first strategy is the foundation of effective security.”
To access the full AV-Comparatives Endpoint EPR Test 2026 and review the complete methodology, visit here.
About Bitdefender
Bitdefender is a cybersecurity leader delivering best-in-class threat prevention, detection, and response solutions worldwide. Guardian over millions of consumer, enterprise, and government environments, Bitdefender is one of the industry’s most trusted experts for eliminating threats, protecting privacy, digital identity and data, and enabling cyber resilience. With deep investments in research and development, Bitdefender Labs discovers hundreds of new threats each minute and validates billions of threat queries daily. The company has pioneered breakthrough innovations in antimalware, IoT security, behavioral analytics, and artificial intelligence and its technology is licensed by more than 180 of the world’s most recognized technology brands. Founded in 2001, Bitdefender has customers in 170+ countries with offices around the world. For more information, visit https://www.bitdefender.com.
Trusted. Always.
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