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Catbird To Enhance Virtualization Security Solution With VMware vShield Integration

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Catbird has announced plans to deliver VMware vShield controls into Catbird vSecurity through an embedded OEM partnership with VMware.

The integration will give Catbird vSecurity customers the ability to deploy the VMware vShield App as an integrated component of Catbird’s broad security and compliance solution for virtualized infrastructure.

Catbird’s vSecurity weaves multi-function security directly into the fabric of virtual and cloud infrastructure to provide comprehensive protection. Available controls include vulnerability management, IPS/IDS, network segmentation, policy enforcement, inventory, configuration and change management, as well as monitoring and enforcement in many other key operational, security and compliance areas.

Trend Micro Broadens Virtualization Security Strategy

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Trend Micro announced today it is broadening its virtualization security portfolio to enable enterprises to fully leverage the benefits of their desktop infrastructures.

Trend Micro’s strategy for desktop virtualization is comprehensive in terms of protection technologies, flexible in terms of deployment scenarios and proven, having been on the market securing virtual desktop environments and enabling maximum ROI since 2009. The company’s latest virtual desktop-aware product, Trend Micro OfficeScan 10.5, was also announced today and rounds out Trend Micro’s virtualization portfolio.

Because different desktop virtualization scenarios require tailored solution approaches, Trend Micro is creating products and solutions that meet varied security needs. Enterprises can choose virtual appliance-based security solutions that are more easily provisioned, managed, and can also be lighter on the host. Now, they also have the option of in-guest, agent-based desktop virtualization security solutions, which provide flexible security levels for comprehensive protection that’s backed by the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network infrastructure for faster, lighter, cloud-based protection.

Ahead of the game, Trend Micro delivers security solutions tailored to the specific needs of both virtualized and physical environments:

  • Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is the industry’s first anti-malware product built on hypervisor-based APIs such as VMsafe and specifically designed to secure active and dormant virtual machines. Available since July 2009, it delivers purpose-built anti-malware for VMware environments.
  • Trend Micro Deep Security, available since November 2009, is the industry’s first security solution designed to provide intrusion defense for both virtual and physical systems leveraging both VMsafe-based virtual appliances and in-guest agents.
  • Trend Micro OfficeScan 10.5, announced today and scheduled to be available at the end of July, provides the industry’s first hypervisor “agnostic” endpoint protection for virtualized desktops operating in all leading virtual desktop environments.

Wipro, Trend Micro Team Up For Virtualization Security Solutions for Dynamic Datacenters

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Trend Micro, a leader in Internet content and dynamic datacenter security, has partnered with Wipro Technologies, the global IT services business of Wipro Limited, to offer virtualization security solutions for dynamic datacenters. The goal of the partnership is to develop solutions that help secure public and private cloud computing environments that are being increasingly challenged to deliver operational cost savings, while still ensuring the security and compliance of critical IT assets.

As part of this strategic agreement, Wipro and Trend Micro are jointly building Centers of Excellence to address the challenging data protection, security and compliance needs of today’s virtualized datacenters, as well as the growing market demand for server consolidation. Mutual customers will be able to fully leverage the benefits of Trend Micro Enterprise Security offerings through Wipro’s accelerated and cost-effective approach for deployment. With access to combined Wipro and Trend Micro expertise at these Centers of Excellence around the globe, including the U.S., U.K.,Australia and Japan, enterprises will be able to better focus on their core business competencies, while letting industry leaders help them effectively implement innovative security solutions that reduce risks and costs.

Wipro and Trend Micro will provide joint virtualized data center security, as well as datacenter consolidation solutions using next-generation security products from Trend Micro and other mutual partners. This initiative will align with current services from Wipro such as data security, managed security monitoring, managed network and host infrastructure security operations, and managed unified threat and vulnerability managed services. Under the agreement, Wipro becomes a global reseller of Trend Micro products that encompass threat management, Web, messaging, server and endpoint security.

Wipro’s vertically aligned business model gives them a deep understanding of their customers’ businesses to build industry-specific, customized solutions through over 55 dedicated labs and Centers of Excellence. In addition to Trend Micro, Wipro has the largest Centers of Excellence for Hewlett-Packard/Mercury, EMC, and Cisco. Similarly, Trend Micro’s own multinational research, development and support centers, TrendLabs, are dedicated to 24/7 threat surveillance, attack prevention, and timely and seamless solutions delivery.

Trend Micro’s coordinated approach to virtualization security delivers comprehensive protection while maintaining the optimum performance, mobility and scalability of virtual machines. By combining their areas of expertise, Trend Micro and Wipro will help enterprises achieve higher consolidation rates, and more fully and safely leverage their virtualization investments.

Trend Micro Expands Virtualization Security Portfolio

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Trend Micro is expanding its overall virtualization security portfolio with the introduction of a content security solution to protect VMware ESX/ESXi environments.

Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is designed to secure VMware virtual machines, both active and dormant, comprehensively and efficiently. The product leverages the VMsafe APIs from VMware to offer layered protection through the use of dedicated scanning VMs coordinated with real-time agents within the VM.

A tough economy is driving companies globally to adopt more cost-effective measures and pursue efficiency, one of the main reasons why analysts expect the virtualization industry to hit over $7 billion over the next four years.

But while server virtualization increases efficiency in the data center, it also challenges the security of the IT environment: Existing content security solutions imported from the physical world typically leave security gaps when deployed in virtual environments. For example, dormant or offline virtual machines can get infected even while dormant, yet are unable to protect themselves with a virus scan agent and signature updates.

Similarly, resource-intensive security operations such as scheduled full system scans can significantly degrade the performance of the host and render the security ineffective, especially when initiated concurrently on multiple virtual machines.

Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is part of Trend Micro Enterprise Security – a tightly integrated offering of content security products, services and solutions which is powered by the Trend Micro(TM) Smart Protection Network. Trend Micro Enterprise Security delivers immediate protection from emerging threats while greatly reducing the cost and complexity of security management.

Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines 1.0 will be available in August 2009 both as a standalone as well as part of the OSCE X Advanced Suite. The solution is also available as part of a new Virtualization Security suite that includes Trend Micro Deep Security, brought to the company from its acquisition of Third Brigade in April 2009. Core Protection for Virtual Machines can be deployed standalone or as a plug-in to OfficeScan Client/Server and managed through the OfficeScan console.

Virtualization Security Startup HyTrust Launches With $5.5 Million In Series A Funding

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HyTrust is entering the virtualization arena today with HyTrust Appliance, which serves as a central point of control, management and visibility for virtualized environments. The company also announced it’s launching with venture capital backing to the tune of $5.5 million, a Series A funding round which was led by Trident Capital and joined by Epic Ventures.

VirtSec nowadays is less about those familiar ‘pure’ security functions like FireWalls (FW) or Intrusion Detection (IDS), but much more about the configuration control and compliance of virtualized environments. HyTrust claims to provide such centralized control, compliance,directory integration and security – requirements that become mission critical as virtual infrastructures scale up and production applications get virtualized. Readers of this blog, probably already know that in addition to immediate cost savings, virtualization enables a more flexible and dynamic infrastructure that can quickly morph to meet changing needs of any organization.

The fresh HyTrust single point of control seems to be competing with Reflex Virtualization Management Center (VMC),  Third Brigade Deep Security and an established suite of products from Catbird V-Security such as VMShield, HypervisorShield and VMPolicyCompliance. However during our interview with Eric Chiu (CEO HyTrust), he was confident that HyTrust is different by “really focusing on the underlying virtual infrastructure itself. HyTrust authenticates traffic across 5 VMware application interfaces and centrally enforces policies through role based access control. HyTrust single point of control and hypervisor security really ensures what is allowed to happen and what not.” Questioned on the introduction of a yet another single point of failure or potential security flaw, Chiu was confident that HyTrust “is even more secure than VMware vCenter, since our appliance runs on a hardened Linux OS, without command line interface and its use is strictly limited to the provided User Interface.” It goes without saying that known malicious penetration attempts, scans and probes were tested too. Apart form the current exclusive support for VMware ESX, Chiu confirmed to Simon Crosby they would come up with support for Citrix XenServer and also Microsoft Hyper-V later this year. “Our go-to-market strategy started with the VMWare enterprise datacenter customers, but we are already in talk with 3 leading Vmware cloud providers.” When it comes to cloud computing,  Chiu sees 2 main scenario’s. First the ‘internal cloud’-approach (aka located in-house, owned & internally managed by an organization), where HyTrust can provide a purpose built lasso around such corporate cloud environment. The second approach involves external cloud providers (located off-premise & managed by a third party provider) and could still make customers achieve compliance in an easy way by implementing Hytrust as a virtual appliance into that cloud offering.

Due to significantly higher rate of change in virtual infrastructure, automated controls are necessary to ensure that security and operational readiness is on par with that of physical environments. In addition, given the spread of virtualization, companies are now being faced with meeting regulatory compliance of their virtual infrastructure. HyTrust allows enterprises to meet these needs and answer the demands of auditors and their solution was created to proactively address the new challenges presented.

Rather than retroactively building necessary safeguards while sensitive data is put at risk, HyTrust, which has three patents pending, allows organizations to build a manageable virtual infrastructure foundation from the ground up. Additionally, to comply with regulations or security standards such as HIPAA, SOX and PCI/DSS, HyTrust gives enterprises the ability to demonstrate that adequate processes and enforcement controls are in place, configuration changes are consistent, and confidential information is secure. The HyTrust Appliance is the only product that addresses virtualization infrastructure control, including all four requirements outlined.

Backed by positive reactions from 12 trial customers, Eric Chiu is confident that he has gotten ‘at the right place, at the right time with the right solution’.

Pricing for the HyTrust Appliance (Enterprise Edition) is based on the number of protected VMware ESX hosts (on a per CPU/socket basis) and HyTrust Appliance license. Protection license for a 2 CPU VMware ESX host is $1,000; the HyTrust virtual appliance is $3,000; and the physical appliance is $7,500. Maintenance and support is charged on 25% of the annual license basis. HyTrust will soon make available the new HyTrust Appliance: Community Edition —a free virtual appliance available for download via the Web. Due out at the end of April, Community will allow protection for up to 3 hosts and offers an excellent way for smaller companies to bring automated virtualization best practices into their environments. HyTrust launched with a direct customer approach, but was already contacted by integrators and resellers eager to distribute licenses. Hytrust is expected to develop such hybrid distribution model in the third quarter of 2009.

Next to its venture capital investors, HyTrust is launching with an impressive list of technology partners, including VMware, Symantec, Cisco Systems and Citrix Systems.

Embotics Releases White Paper on Virtualization Security

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Embotics today announced “Understanding VirtSec,” a new study that focuses on virtual server security issues inherent in IT environments. The research addresses threats posed by virtualization deployments and the technology that is available to tackle these emerging issues. Authored by David M. Lynch, vice president of marketing of Embotics, the white paper identifies immediate and potential security threats so organizations can plan accordingly.

Virtualization security is a wide concern for IT executives and Embotics’ “Understanding VirSec” summarizes the new threats and issues associated with server virtualization. The research, containing a wide range of user feedback, helps IT executives differentiate the potential future security issues from those that are present today, and offers recommendations and best practices to minimize these risks.

As virtualization deployments expand and become more complex, organizations are facing increased risk of data center security threats. Embotics’ “Understanding VirtSec” provides an overview of why IT administrators cannot rely on IT policies and processes that existed pre-virtualization, and how the impact of an uncontrolled environment in the data center is detrimental.