Symantec, VMware to secure virtual, cloud environments

BANGALORE, INDIA: Symantec Corp. and VMware announced five new security integrations with VMware cloud infrastructure suite, designed to deliver protection for virtual and cloud environments.

“Companies today face an increasingly toxic threat landscape. True information protection is more than antivirus. With our new VMware integrations, we're enabling customers to proactively protect their information whether it's in a physical or virtual environment,” said Francis deSouza, group president, enterprise products and services, Symantec. “Together, Symantec and VMware are taking protection to the next level to give companies confidence to fully embrace virtualization and realize the cost savings and efficiency it brings.”

With the new VMware integrations, Symantec enables joint customers to protect virtual infrastructure and business-critical applications with data loss prevention, IT risk and compliance, data centre protection, security information and event management (SIEM) and endpoint protection solutions, said a release.

“The unique security concerns of the cloud extend well beyond malware protection,” said Raghu Raghuram, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Infrastructure and Management, VMware. “The integration of Symantec products with the VMware cloud infrastructure suite will offer fundamentally new security capabilities to accelerate the ability of customers to quickly and safely realize the benefits of cloud computing.”

In addition to integration between Symantec endpoint security offerings with VMware vShield Endpoint expected to be available later in 2012, Symantec is introducing five new integrations with the VMware cloud infrastructure suite:

Orchestrated Data Loss Prevention

Symantec Data Loss Prevention, available now, addresses the growing challenge organizations face in finding and protecting their intellectual property wherever it resides. 

Integration with VMware vShield App enables Symantec customers to find and locate data across virtual environments. Symantec Data Loss Prevention makes it easier for customers to identify and remediate potential data loss in virtual environments by automatically separating virtual machines that contain sensitive information from those that do not.

Reduced Compliance Deficiencies Across Converged Infrastructure

Symantec Control Compliance Suite, available now, uses centralized vulnerability and control assessments to provide discovery of unknown or unauthorized virtual machines to reduce security risk in the physical and virtual infrastructure.

Leaveraging VMware-published security standards, Control Compliance Suite is also able to assess virtual settings to identify areas of risk and help prioritize remediation efforts. This helps prevent application failure or data corruption on virtual machines, while facilitating compliance with mandates such as PCI or HIPAA.

Moreover, Control Compliance Suite can ensure that the VMware process guidelines are being followed with procedural questionnaires while automatically reporting on configuration changes, patch levels and critical policy violations on VMware vSphere.

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Protect Virtual Data Centers Against Advanced Threats

Symantec Critical System Protection currently protects ESX guest and hypervisors with granular, policy-based controls. Symantec plans to add support for VMware vSphere 5 in Spring 2012, leaveraging out-of-the-box VMware-prescribed server security policies for ESXi and VMware vCenter that will enable organizations to identify server compliance violations and suspicious activity in real-time, limit administrative control, restrict network communications and prevent file and configuration tampering of the virtual infrastructure.

Because Symantec Critical System Protection is a non-signature, policy-based technology it also allows organizations to stop unauthorized services from running on servers and protect against zero-day attacks, without impacting system performance.

Integrated Threat Intelligence

Symantec Security Information Manager (SSIM), available in Summer 2012, will enable organizations to seamlessly identify and respond to security threats that impact business critical applications across both their physical and virtual infrastructures.

Through integration with the VMware vShield log management collector, SSIM will correlate virtual machine activity with events from the physical environment as well as the Symantec's global intelligence network to give a holistic view of an organization's security posture. Customers will be able to perform malicious activity assessments for their entire environment–physical and virtual– gaining immediate insight into malicious activity and threats inside their virtual infrastructure.

Symantec's Managed Security Service (MSS) will also offer a VMware vShield log management collector to allow customers who prefer a cloud-based service delivery model to benefit from a seamless view of security threats across both their physical and virtual environments.

The addition of the vShield log management collector to already broad array of devices and applications MSS monitors, will further extend MSS edge-to-endpoint visibility and when combined with global threat intelligence and 7x24 access to GIAC-certified Security Analysts will allow organizations to reduce exposure to threats and business disruption.

The vShield log management collector is expected to be available in Summer 2012.

Optimized Endpoint Protection for High-density Virtual Environments

Symantec plans to leaverage VMware vShield Endpoint with its endpoint security offerings to maximize performance in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and virtual server environments without sacrificing powerful security.

Available in the second half of 2012, these solutions will offload critical security analysis from protected virtual machines to a dedicated security virtual appliance resulting in optimized scan performance, reduced resource utilization, and increased management visibility. Built upon Symantec Insight, these solutions will provide fast and effective endpoint security for VMware environments, offering unique protection against modern polymorphic malware, zero-day attacks and rootkits.