VMware’s plan for intrinsic cloud security

VMware has announced the company’s strategy to make security intrinsic to the digital enterprise. Intrinsic security makes protecting critical applications and data more automated, proactive and pervasive across the entire distributed enterprise. The first aspect of the strategy is the new VMware Advanced Security for Cloud Foundation which will enable customers to replace legacy security solutions and deliver unified protection across private and public clouds. A survey commissioned by VMware and conducted by Forrester Consulting shows that 75% of respondents depend on perimeter firewalls, however, East-West security controls need to be different than those for traditional perimeter (North-South) security as 73% of respondents believe their existing East-West traffic is not adequately protected. VMware is specifically addressing the internal data centre security challenge with this solution, which will include recent acquisition Carbon Black technology, VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer with Web Application Firewall capabilities and VMware NSX Distributed IDS/IPS. All three will integrate into VMware vSphere for data centre workloads, enabling the security to follow workloads throughout their lifecycle.