Shortly before the start of the security event RSA Conference 2008, the co-founders of Boston-based Montego Networks Bob Darabant and John Peterson announced the launch of their new company, whose Montego HyperSwitch is an innovative virtual security networking solution that delivers policy enforcement, access control, and secure switching for virtual networks.
In their press release, the self-funded company claims virtualization incurs “unique network and application security risks which, if left unaddressed, leave virtual machines, virtualized applications and critical data exposed to service interruptions, data theft, regulatory compliance violations and other threats.”
The company exits stealth mode with their HyperSwitch product, attempting to address these vulnerabilities better than the current available network security solutions, which they claim often offer limited coverage that may create a false sense of security.
“The Montego HyperSwitch approaches virtualized network security from a new direction that integrates network policy enforcement and access control with a high-availability virtual security switch. This unique approach allows the Montego HyperSwitch to efficiently deliver advanced capabilities including policy-based virtual network partitioning, L2-L4 Firewall, Identity Firewall, Content Firewall, virtual network discovery, secure inter-VM communication, 802.1Q VLANs, 802.1D spanning tree, load-balanced Quality of Service (QoS), Policy Based Switching, Policy Based Traffic Mirroring, and more. In addition, Montego’s carefully-calibrated HyperVSecurity technology enables high performance and exceptionally low host resource consumption.”
In April 2008, Montego Networks plans to start offering a Starter Edition of the Montego HyperSwitch as a free download, and selling its Enterprise Edition, for which the introductory price is list-priced at $ 495 USD (per annual software license) in the US.
As for its compatibility roadmap:
“Montego’s HyperVSecurity release 1.5 initially supports VMWare, but has been architected to operate within heterogeneous virtualization environments to provide additional support for Citrix, Virtual Iron, and Microsoft virtualization technology in Q3-2008.”
“Security for virtual environments is imperative. While some security vendors are now touting security for virtual networks, users often find their solutions are incomplete or impractical,” said Bob Darabant. “The Montego HyperSwitch is a completely new approach that integrates high performance virtual security, high-availability virtual switching and an open, interoperable security framework. This allows users to enjoy complete protection for their virtual networks along with the open flexibility to leverage their choice of multi-vendor security offerings.”
You can view a web-video demonstration of Montego Networks here.
[Source: press release]