Security Vendors Talk Virtualization Security at VMworld

Security vendors have their eyes set on cloud and virtual environments this week as the VMworld conference in San Francisco gets underway.

McAfee, part of Intel Security, announced today a number of additions to its Server Security Suites portfolio of products. The first part of the announcement is McAfee Server Security Suite Essentials, which offers protection and management for physical, virtual and cloud deployments. According to the company, it gives organizations the ability to discover workloads for security visibility. Blacklisting and virtualization support technologies provide security for key workloads on physical and virtual servers with minimal CPU processing overhead, according to the company.

The second part of today’s announcement is for McAfee Server Security Suite Advanced, which includes all the features of Server Security Suite Essentials as well as capabilities such as whitelisting and change control. Both these suites come integrated with McAfee MOVE AV technology, which offers malware protection for virtualized server environments and can be implemented across multiple vendor platforms.

“Today’s flexible data centers require innovative solutions that shield physical, virtual and cloud environments from stealthy attacks,” said Candace Worley, senior vice president and general manager of endpoint security at McAfee, in a statement. “Our Server Security Suites guard servers, the crown jewels of the data center, with comprehensive protection, simplified security management, improved scalability for large environments and connections into key technologies throughout the data center.”

Intel also announced the Intel Security Controller. Available for beta in September, the application is deployed as a virtual machine within the virtual infrastructure and runs transparently to users and administrators.

“Using bi-directional, notification-based application programming interfaces for communication, it continuously and dynamically connects and brokers between security solutions and the virtual infrastructure,” according to a data sheet on the product. 

The technology integrates McAfee Virtual Network Security Platform into VMware NSX, according to Intel.

Security vendor Trend Micro has an eye towards VMware NSX as well. The company is using the conference to showcase the recently released Trend Micro Deep Security 9.5, which offers agentless security aimed at customers deploying VMware NSX across file and network-based security controls. This includes enhanced cloud support via a new Smart Agent meant to streamline deployment and increase flexibility, as well as new plug-ins for VMware vCenter Operations Manager that offers customers visibility into security events across virtual data centers via a dashboard display.

“Trend Micro and VMware continue to collaborate on security solutions for the software-defined data center, and with our new solution for VMware NSX, we are advancing our ongoing commitment to security innovation,” said Partha Panda, vice president of global channels and strategic alliances at Trend Micro, in a statement.