IBM last week introduced IBM Virtual Server Security for VMware vSphere, a software product designed to help organizations secure and protect their virtual server infrastructure. The software will help safeguard virtual server environments and allows businesses a more secure path for transitioning critical assets to virtual enterprise data centers.
IBM has been working with clients to manage this strategic shift and simplify and optimize client infrastructures. While the migration to virtual environments offers many benefits, it also requires businesses to take unique measures to combat the next generation of security threats and compliance challenges. These measures are required because of reduced visibility and control that come with the addition of more information technology layers. Given this changing landscape, traditional security made for physical computing environments becomes inadequate as a sole solution.
The new IBM Virtual Server Security for VMware vSphere helps address these concerns, providing protection for every layer of the virtual infrastructure including the hypervisor, operating system, network, applications, server-based virtual desktops, virtual machine and traffic between virtual machines. By integrating with VMware VMsafe technology, the new software provides clients with better visibility, security granularity and scalability in their growing virtual data centers.
Automatic protection features include:
- Virtual Network Access Control (VNAC) to limit network access from a virtual server until security posture is confirmed;
- rootkit detection and prevention to increase virtual server uptime and availability;
- virtual infrastructure monitoring and reporting to identify vulnerabilities;
- autodiscovery and virtual network segment protection to provide visibility and control of the virtual infrastructure.
With the data center undergoing dynamic changes, the ability to manage, control and audit the actions of privileged and powerful system users and administrators across traditional and virtual environments becomes even more critical. All of the automatic protection features in the new software product can help clients to more easily meet compliance standards and regulation requirements. Additionally, this new offering complements already formidable IBM capabilities for securing the virtual environment, such as controlling access and monitoring privilege.
IBM Virtual Server Security for VMware vSphere will be available in December 2009.
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