Bitdefender + Microsoft Virtual Network TAP: Deepening Visibility, Strengthening Security

In today’s rapidly evolving threat landscape, visibility is everything. The ability to observe and analyze network traffic in real time is critical to detecting and responding to sophisticated cyberthreats before they can do damage. That’s why Bitdefender is proud to announce that Bitdefender GravityZone XDR is now validated to work with  Microsoft’s New Azure virtual network terminal access point (TAP).

This validation makes Bitdefender one of only a select few vendors whose solution is tested and verified to integrate with this powerful new Azure capability. And we believe it reinforces our commitment to innovation and deep integration across cloud ecosystems to simplify and improve your organization’s security outcomes.

What Is Azure Virtual Network TAP—and Why Does It Matter?

In a traditional on-premises data center, a network “TAP” is a physical device that provides visibility into all the traffic traversing a network switch. It’s often used for security monitoring, application performance analysis, and network troubleshooting by sending a copy of all traffic to a dedicated analytics tool. In cloud environments, this level of access has historically been difficult to replicate due to architectural differences, until now.

Azure virtual network TAP provides a cloud-native equivalent to these physical TAPs, allowing continuous streaming of virtual machine (VM) network traffic to a packet collector or analytics tool—like Bitdefender GravityZone XDR. With this capability, customers can gain deep insight into east-west traffic, lateral movement, and other behaviors that are notoriously difficult to observe in cloud environments.

Bitdefender GravityZone XDR: Powerful Detection from Every Angle

By integrating with Azure virtual network TAP, Bitdefender GravityZone XDR is now positioned to give organizations even deeper visibility into their Azure cloud workloads. GravityZone’s network sensor leverages this traffic data to detect and analyze a wide range of attack behaviors, such as lateral movement, brute force attempts, port scans, data exfiltration, and more.

This is especially valuable for uncovering threats across IoT devices, unmanaged endpoints, and SaaS environments — where traditional endpoint protection often lacks reach. Now, with access to mirrored traffic from Azure VMs, GravityZone can correlate telemetry across endpoints, identities, networks, and cloud infrastructure to deliver a richer, more accurate picture of emerging threats.

And because the virtual network TAP is built natively into the Azure platform, there’s no need to deploy or manage extra virtual appliances just to gain visibility. You can simply stream VM traffic to Bitdefender GravityZone XDR, where it’s automatically analyzed by our award-winning threat detection engine. It’s a seamless integration designed for today’s agile, cloud-first organizations.

Improved Security Outcomes

The benefits of this new capability go beyond convenience. With the addition of Azure virtual network TAP support, Bitdefender GravityZone XDR now enables:

• Improved threat detection across cloud workloads, including lateral attacks and stealthy data exfiltration
• Faster investigation and response, thanks to a more complete picture of attacker behavior
• Greater visibility into unmanaged and IoT devices, which are often blind spots for security teams
• Reduced complexity in network traffic capture and monitoring workflows

In short, this is a game-changer for organizations relying on Microsoft Azure—and yet another reason Bitdefender continues to lead the way in integrated, intelligent cybersecurity solutions.

The Bottom Line

Cybersecurity is increasingly a battle of visibility. The more you can see, the faster you can respond—and the better your outcomes. With Bitdefender GravityZone XDR validated for Microsoft Azure virtual network TAP, our customers now gain access to deeper traffic insights in the cloud, without added complexity.