Check Point Pushes Virtual Security for VMware Environments

Check Point Software Technologies is expanding its virtual security offerings with an eye toward protecting VMware environments.

With Security Gateway Virtual Edition (VE), Check Point has added integration with VMware’s VMsafe technology in a bid to bring the same level of firewall and intrusion prevention capabilities to virtual networks that Check Point customers have on physical networks.

“VE is integrated with VMware’s VMsafe technology, which provides visibility down to the kernel,” explained Tamir Hardof, product marketing manager for network security here at Check Point. “This allows us to do inspection of traffic between virtual machines, effectively inspecting every packet on every port of the vSwitch.”

Security Gateway VE is designed to secure traffic between virtual machines. Organizations can automatically apply firewall and intrusion prevention policies to all existing or future virtual machines without changing the existing network topology or experiencing downtime during live migration, Check Point said.

Right now, the product only protects VMware environments and not those of other virtualization vendors such as Citrix. However, Check Point said it will look to support other environments based on business case and customer need.

“Protecting the network from external threats and inspecting traffic in between virtual machines are two primary challenges associated with securing virtual environments,” said Dorit Dor, vice president of products at Check Point Software Technologies, in a statement.

“With the Security Gateway VE, customers can simplify the complexities of securing dynamic virtual environments, while leveraging the same infrastructure and unified management used to protect their physical networks,” he added.

Pricing begins at $2,000 for a virtual system with up to eight cores. It will be available at the end of September.