Romania-based security solutions provider Bitdefender announced on Wednesday a new technology designed to help virtualization vendors and datacenter administrators detect and block sophisticated threats.
Bitdefender Hypervisor-based Memory Introspection provides organizations insight into virtualized endpoints through hypervisor-level inspection.
The security firm says architectural constraints prevent traditional in-guest security products from addressing issues that stem from privilege limitations in the operating system. The Hypervisor-based Memory Introspection technology helps organizations overcome this problem by operating from a stack level that is below guest operating systems (ring-minus-one).
By leveraging hypervisor privileges, the technology enables enterprises to gain complete insight into virtualized endpoints, but with zero footprint.
The solution allows more efficient detection and mitigation of attacks and previously installed malware, and empowers data center administrators to better protect data within virtualized endpoints, Bitdefender said.
The security firm’s approach is to assume that the protected infrastructure has been penetrated, which is why Bitdefender Clean-up Tools are injected into running virtual endpoints.
“Fundamentally, when both security and attackers are operating with kernel-level permissions, it’s a stand-off. Virtualization revolutionized computing by adding a layer of abstraction below operating systems,” said Mihai Dontu, chief Linux officer at Bitdefender. “Our technology brings security to that layer; and while intuitive, it is revolutionary because, until now, it was deemed extremely difficult to achieve.”
Rares Stefan, Vice President of Global Alliances at Bitdefender, told SecurityWeek that the new technology has already been fully integrated into GravityZone, a security management solution designed to protect virtual and physical desktops, servers, and mobile devices. Most of this technology, showcased these days at the Citrix Synergy 2015 conference, will be integrated across all Bitdefender products.
Stefan noted that while the framework is set, the company doesn’t have any short-term plans to license Hypervisor-based Memory Introspection technology to other security vendors.
Related: Decade-Old VENOM Bug Exposes Virtualized Environments to Attacks