Case Study: Coleg Gwent eliminates ransomware and restores virtual endpoint performance with Bitdefender GravityZone

Coleg Gwent boosts virtualized estate with better cybersecurity

Coleg Gwent, the largest higher education institution in Usk, Wales, was virtualizing thousands of desktops and servers when its existing security stack began consuming excessive compute resources, causing virtualized endpoints to slow or lock up and triggering weekly infections and ransomware incidents that required on‑site reimaging. After evaluating several vendors, Coleg Gwent selected Bitdefender and its GravityZone Business Security (with GravityZone Security for Virtualized Environments) to solve both performance and detection gaps.

Bitdefender deployed GravityZone across 4,800 physical and virtual desktops and servers spanning six campuses and remote users, using machine learning, behavioral analysis and a virtual‑aware per‑CPU model to minimize footprint. The result: ransomware incidents fell from eight in two years to zero over six years, endpoint performance degradation was eliminated, time spent cleaning and rebuilding infected machines dropped substantially, and the college has been able to scale securely (planning growth from 4,800 to 8,000 endpoints) while Bitdefender successfully isolated threats such as NotPetya on remote laptops.

Coleg Gwent

Mike Gower-Fox

ICT Infrastructure Engineer