Thursday, February 28, 2008 8:21 AM
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Security Insights Blog » Virtualization equals real security
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Virtualization equals real security
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 9:09pm by Christopher Bolin
Hotels in Cannes don’t just sell out for the Film Festival; all rooms are also booked for a big IT show this week: VMware’s first VMworld Europe.
Today I showed an audience of about 4,500 people at VMworld Europe how VMware and McAfee together will be able to protect virtual environments in ways beyond what is available to protect physical environments today.
Our customers are using more and more virtualization. We’ve devoted a lot of time and energy to provide the best protection possible, for both physical and virtualized environments.
Virtualization represents a disruptive change in how the world uses its computing devices. It has also expanded the possibilities for more comprehensive security for the virtualization platforms and the guest operating systems they host.
With the popularity of virtualization and the rush to reap its benefits, security must not become an afterthought. That is why I am excited about today’s big news: VMware VMsafe. With VMsafe, VMware is building adaptable security interfaces as a fundamental part of its products, allowing partners such as McAfee to offer innovative security solutions.
McAfee is the first security company to publicly demonstrate VMsafe. At VMworld we showed how, with VMsafe, we can block a malicious driver being executed in a virtual machine. We also showed that we can scan and clean offline VMs so they are up-to-date when they’re spun up.
We deliver real and meaningful security for virtualized environments today. Our security risk management solutions are fully compatible with VMware virtualization and help organizations create a safe computing environment, spanning virtualized servers, networks and desktops.
In the future, VMsafe could be used in a range of our products, further enhancing the protection. Just as VMware has provided a fundamental change to how computing resources are used, it will allow security technologies to protect virtual environments in ways beyond those possible for a single monolithic OS. VMsafe is the key to that promise.
Aside from our support for VMsafe, we also announced an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) agreement with VMware to use VMware ESX Server in future products. In addition, we announced beta availability of our new Email and Web Security Virtual Appliance, built from the ground up for the VMware platform, and unveiled a new virtual infrastructure security assessment service.
You can read more about how McAfee secures virtual environments in our news releases and on our virtualization Web site: http://www.mcafee.com/virtualization
Virtually yours,
Christopher