Intel and VMware team up to provide advanced threat protection

At Infosecurity Europe 2015 Intel Security and VMware announced an integrated solution that leverages a Software-Defined Data Centre approach and the VMware NSX network virtualisation platform to automate the distribution and enforcement of Intel Security’s McAfee Network Security Platform (NSP), providing Intelligent Intrusion Prevention services (IPS) for the protection of east-west traffic within the data centre.

The new integrated solution includes the McAfee NSP IPS-VM100-VSS (a new IPS-VM Series model designed for interoperability with VMware NSX), McAfee Network Security Manager, Intel Security Controller and VMWare NSX network virtualisation platform.

The Intel Security Controller transparently runs as a broker between the VMware NSX infrastructure and the Intel Security’s McAfee NSP. Working in conjunction with the VMware NSX Manager, it enables network IPS protection to be dynamically and automatically provisioned to help protect intra-VM traffic based on the defined policies and requirements allowing administrators to experience a “plug-in” like environment that enables support for micro-segmentation, security profiles, workflows, policies, and groups.

Enterprise and Service Provider customers will benefit from simplified orchestration, chaining and delivery of the same advanced services inside the data centre that Intel Security provides for north-south traffic at the perimeter of the data centre.

Customers immediately benefiting from this solution include healthcare cloud provider ClearDATA, whose customers require HIPAA compliant cloud hosting, backup, disaster recovery and information security services. Meeting these rigorous demands requires ClearDATA to provide advanced threat protection uniformly for all data centre traffic coming into the data centre as well as within the data centre without increased complexity. The integrated solution allows ClearDATA to automate the provisioning and delivery of IPS services for protecting traffic inside the Data Centre and scaling these services dynamically in response to customer demand.

“Security is a critical concern for our health care customers who must deliver patient services quickly, in a secure manner. We use VMware NSX network virtualization to simplify and automate the delivery of Intel Security’s McAfee NSP through our new Cloud. This allows us to offer our customers the same advanced levels of threat protection for all their data center traffic, with security controls aligned with each application” said Matt Ferrari, CTO, ClearDATA.

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