Enterprise Support Policy
Scope
The Bitdefender Enterprise Support Policy aims to clearly define the Standard Support service level that Bitdefender will deliver to its world-wide Business Customers by describing the processes that are performed when a Support Case is submitted to Bitdefender Enterprise Support Team. Bitdefender Enterprise Support will increase in its values and deliver technical support without losing continuous focus over our core services: availability, quality, proactivity and technology expertise.
Overview
Support eligibility
Bitdefender offers standard support services for all its Business Customers in order to ensure that eligible Bitdefender Business Products operate in accordance with their documentation. When submitting a Support Case, the customer designated contact must provide identification details and a valid Bitdefender Business Product license.
Support period
The support period starts either (i) at the date when Bitdefender product was purchased or (ii) at the date when the product was activated, without exceeding the End of Life policy.
End of Life policy
Bitdefender continues to proactively develop and shape new solutions and feature modifications; as a result, it leads to a need for discontinuing older software revisions as well as products. The resulting new solutions and feature modifications often lead to a need for discontinuing older software revisions as well as products.
The support matrix lists all Bitdefender Business Products and their support eligibility: Bitdefender B2B products support lifecycle
Service releases
Service releases are produced for current Bitdefender major Business Products releases. Since this is an update to a major product, the update itself does not have a separate End of Life (EOL) period. Once a new update is posted, it will immediately displace the previous download.
Once EOL has been announced on a major product family, Bitdefender will provide product updates for a subsequent 6 calendar months after the End of Sale date.
Roles and responsibilities
Bitdefender Business Support will respond to and work to resolve Support Cases that:
Address issues resulting from the Business Products not functioning as described in the official documentation
Answer general questions not addressed in the official documentation
Provide help and guidance with respect to threat detection (False Positives, False Negatives)
Address Product Feature Requests
Provide help and guidance with respect to basic product configuration, based on Bitdefender Support availability
Are related to licensing modifications, based on customer requests: add seats, split licenses, merge licenses, extend licenses
Service requests out of scope
Customer requests not covered by standard support include, but are not limited to, the following:
Disinfection of malware-infected computers
Malware description requests
Best practices regarding security configurations
Business Products not functioning as described in the official documentation, due to Bitdefender minimum required specifications not being met
Business Products not functioning as described in the official documentation, due to third-party applications
Requests related to the function of third-party applications or operating systems
Applying third-party patches to operating systems and applications
Performance improvements and customer device tuning
Customer designated contacts
Bitdefender will provide Technical Support services to Customer through the designated contacts. The designated contacts will be responsible for initiating the request for assistance and must be technically skilled and knowledgeable about the Bitdefender Business Products and the environment they are being used in.
Premium Support
Bitdefender gives you a choice of Premium Support packages. Our support packages are ideally suited to companies that require enterprise critical SLA and services. Details about Bitdefender’s premium support packages can be found here: Enterprise Premium Support
Self-service
Bitdefender provides a variety of resources that can help you answer product questions and resolve some technical support issues without opening a Support Case. These resources include:
The Help & Support section from the product management console Customer can access the GravityZone installation and administration guides
Support Center
Product documentation
Knowledge base regarding troubleshooting and how-to articles
Release notes (technical documentation of new product version features)
Bitdefender Forum Join Bitdefender community to connect with other business customers and share solutions about Bitdefender products, post discussion and more: Bitdefender Forum
Computer/Virtualization security blogs
Contact and availability
Bitdefender provides 24x7 Technical Support services for Bitdefender Business Products, in English language, world-wide, with our HQ based engineers.
Bitdefender also offers localized support in our Australia, France, Germany, Romania, Spain and US points of presence. For these, Support is offered in local language, within business hours.
Follow Contact for full Support contact details.
Phone
Phone assistance is Bitdefender’s main communication channel for Severity 1 incidents. Customers are encouraged to use this channel for urgent and business critical issues. Bitdefender provides 24x7 Phone Technical Support services for Bitdefender Business Products, in English language, world-wide, with our HQ based engineers. Bitdefender also offers localized phone support in our Australia, France, Germany, Romania, Spain and US points of presence, for these, Support is offered in local language, within business hours.
Bitdefender CustomerZone
CustomerZone is Bitdefender’s main customer support portal for Business customers. It is a web portal that facilitates Support Case management. It is the preferred and recommended channel of communication for non-Severity 1 cases.
Usage of this channel is gated by a one-time registration. This helps with customer identification and authorization and provides a series of benefits:
Centralized Support Cases tracking
Portal user management
Immediate update notification
Platform independent
Other contact channels
Web Form: Business customers can submit a Support Case via the Bitdefender web form. You will be able to submit a Case to Bitdefender Support by using the contact form from the support area of the website, following this link.
Product Support Form: Business customers can submit a Support Case via Bitdefender GravityZone support form. You will be able to submit a Case to Bitdefender Support by using the contact form from the “Help & Support” area of the GravityZone console.
Chat: Chat assistance is a live Bitdefender communication channel for non-critical issues. It is available only in English language and considering reasonable availability, 24x7. For the avoidance of any doubt, this availability is provided on a “best-effort” basis. Contact us on Chat.
Certified Partner Support
If you would like to contact your local Bitdefender certified partner, please check the availability here.
Case Management activities
When a technical issue with a Bitdefender Business Product is logged, the Bitdefender Enterprise Support Team is there to assist and offer technical guidance. Your support case will be promptly assigned to the appropriate support engineer. The following sections detail the stages of a support case and explain general processes and procedures, during different case stages.
Initiate a Support case
Customer designated contacts can log a Support Case via the desired channel. The information submitted will be prioritized for an efficient and fast resolution. After submitting the new Support Case, your request is assigned a Support Case ID. The Support Case ID will be sent to you in a computer-generated message acknowledging receipt of your support case. Use this support case ID number when communicating with Bitdefender about that specific issue.
General information required for case logging on all communication channels:
Business Product used
Operating System
Issue description
Basic Support Tools Logs: Windows | Linux | macOS
Support Case ID (if the call is regarding an existing issue)
Depending your preferred channel of communication, we might also need your full contact details.
Work with Support cases
Bitdefender Support team will work on your issue until it is mutually agreed that the support case can be closed. A support engineer will contact you either offline or by phone as appropriate during the resolution process. Your responsibility is to have the appropriate resources available to work with the support engineer. Typically, this would be during business hours, but could be 24x7 based on the severity of the situation.
Support engineers will work with you to try to resolve the issue, taking necessary steps to (i) fully diagnose the problem and (ii) afterwards find a solution. This may involve:
Asking you for more information regarding the case
Recommending you to install specific software and/or patches
Asking for specific debug/investigation data from your system and, if necessary, conducting tests to generate this data
Trying to reproduce the scenario on one of your available machines during a remote session as proposed by a Bitdefender engineer
Asking for third-party software samples that may interfere with Bitdefender solution. Lawfully obtaining and providing such software remains entirely your responsibility
Verifying software bugs with our engineering staff
Asking you to accept implementing and testing workaround suggestions that may avoid the problem in the future
Asking you to involve networking, database or other technology specific administrators to help troubleshoot
Working with you to involve relevant third-party software or hardware vendors (for example, your operating system and database vendors) if a problem is suspected in their product
Support case closure
A support case is typically closed when you confirm that a resolution is reached, or if Bitdefender does not hear back from you after three attempts to contact you over a ten-day period. Bitdefender may also close support cases if they cannot be resolved, or are chosen not to be resolved, with acknowledgement and agreement from end-user.
Severity definitions for incidents
Severity level is a measure of the relative impact of an issue on your systems or business. Accurately defining the severity of your issue ensures a timely response and helps Bitdefender understand the nature of your issue.
The customer may indicate a case severity level and this is validated on Bitdefender’s end by the support engineer, based on the following definitions:
Severity | Impact |
|---|---|
Severity 1 - Critical Your business has stopped due to a Bitdefender product |
|
Severity 2 - Major Business is severely impacted, but it can continue to operate |
|
Severity 3 - Minimal Minimal business impact |
|
Severity 4 - Trivial Business is not affected |
|
Product enhancements, feature requests and all other non-incident cases are not SLA bound and will be treated in best effort scenario.
Target response times
Bitdefender Enterprise Support team evaluates each submitted Support Case, based on severity and support entitlement. Based on this evaluation, a support engineer will provide a response within the target service times outlined in the table below. For Severity 1 cases, Bitdefender strongly recommends using the phone channel.
Severity | Standard support |
|---|---|
Severity 1 - Critical | 2 hours |
Severity 2 - Major | 8 hours |
Severity 3 - Minor | 24 hours |
Severity 4 - Trivial | 48 hours |
Remote incident assistance
Customers can have their issue solved via a technical remote assistance. When faced with an incident where other forms of support have been unable to resolve the issue, the customer will have the option to request a remote session.
The support engineer will analyze the request and depending on the nature of the incident, he may offer a remote diagnostic and troubleshooting service for the Bitdefender installed product - this service is offered at the discretion of Bitdefender Enterprise Support team.
Remote sessions will only be offered when the issues are clear and all requested logs and information has been provided by customer. The availability for a remote session is subject to Bitdefender support engineer’s judgement and availability.
Key services provided as part of remote consulting engagement can include the following:
Troubleshooting on the reported incident
Items that are out of scope for a remote consulting engagement include the following:
New setup or installations
Actual deployment of new appliances
Configuration changes
Development or modification of custom scripts
Professional Services engagements
Remote access will only be carried out with the express permission of the customer.
The customer has to be present during the entire remote session.
Bitdefender engineer is not allowed, in any circumstances, to operate changes, during the remote session, to any product or environment outside Bitdefender Business Products.
Malware assistance
Bitdefender provides access to a collection of online resources.
If you are experiencing strange behavior on your system or you find a suspicious file that may be malware, follow the steps from this article to submit to our Support team a log generated by our BDSys tool from the affected machine. You hereby acknowledge and agree that any information contained by the said log is provided strictly for diagnosis and recommendation purposes, as per this Policy and Bitdefender has no responsibility of any kind with respect to such information.
Make sure to provide us with the following information, so that we can fully understand the cause and provide you with more information. This information will be used for malware analysis only by our Antimalware Laboratories and will be treated accordingly:
Describe the suspicious behavior that led you to believe that your system is infected
Upload a screenshot displaying the malware or the effects of the malware (if applicable)
Update your Bitdefender software, run a Full System scan, and attach the scan log to your e-mail
Provide us with the BDSys report
Suspicious sample files
Customer Survey policy
The Technical Support quality levels that Bitdefender currently offers are based on quality feedback from our Business Customers. This feedback is collected through our support surveys performed regularly.
You are invited to complete a satisfaction survey after a support case or a remote session is closed. Each short survey sent by email will ask for your feedback in the following areas:
Bitdefender Enterprise Support Team
Professional effectiveness, responsiveness and knowledge of Bitdefender representatives
Response time
Overall impression