virtualization

Altor Networks today announced the availability of the Altor VF (Virtual Firewall), and announced its certified integration with products from ArcSight, Juniper Networks, Mazu Networks and VMware.

The Altor VF is a software security appliance that runs in a virtualized environment and enforces security policy on a per virtual machine (VM) basis. Unlike existing firewalls designed for physical networks, the Altor VF virtual firewall can secure Live Migration – a technology designed to trigger automatic movement of VMs across physical servers, but capable of inadvertently moving an application to a less trusted network. The Altor VF was purpose-built for the virtual environment – enabling tighter security policy and greater ease-of-use than existing virtual firewalls adapted from their physical firewall counterparts.

The Altor VF extends the functionality of traditional firewalls. Traditional firewalls not only provide security to physical networks, they also provide visibility to the traffic running through them and export some of that data to 3rd party products to aggregate and correlate data across the network. However, traditional firewalls cannot see into the virtual environment. The Altor VF extends visibility into the virtual environment – providing NetFlow statistics, Sys Log, and other network statistics on a per application basis and exporting that data to 3rd party products such as those from ArcSight and Mazu Networks (Please see separate releases for details).

Similarly, in existing physical networks, some companies also employ an Intrusion Detection & Prevention System (IDS/IPS) to further secure their physical networks. Through its partnership with Juniper Networks, the Altor VF enables Juniper IDP appliances to extend their protection into the virtual environment (Please see separate releases for details).

The Altor VF brings to market a number of industry firsts to dramatically improve virtual network security management:

— VirtualCenter Integration — The Altor VF includes out-of-the-box integration with VMware’s VirtualCenter, enabling the automated deployment of virtual firewalls on ESX hosts. The product further applies a default policy to all new virtual machines — helping control virtual machine sprawl.

— Security Policy per Virtual Machine — VMs on a virtual server can serve different purposes — ranging from development and test to various types of production applications. The Altor VF locks down each VM to its specified use, insuring no communication among VMs with mixed application trust levels.

— Support for Live Migration — When VMotion moves a VM to a different physical host, the Altor VF ensures that its security policy and active sessions move along with it. Therefore, companies can obtain the full benefits of Live Migration while maintaining security within their virtual network.

The Altor VF is available immediately with prices ranging between $1,500 and $2,000 per server depending on volume.