Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is designed to protect virtual machines whether they are active or offline. The virtualization security product from Trend Micro is an attempt to provide new levels of malware protection for VMs.
Trend Micro is pushing ahead with plans to bolster its virtualization
security portfolio with a new offering designed to protect VMware ESX/ESXi
environments.
Dubbed Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines, the product is
slated to be available in August. Designed to protect both active and dormant
VMware virtual machines, the product "leverages the VMsafe APIs from
VMware to offer layered protection through the use of dedicated scanning VMs
coordinated with real-time agents within the VM," Trend Micro said in a
news release.
"The typical model across the industry has been you sit on an [operating
system] and then you protect yourself-the same OS that you're on, the OS itself
and the file system on that same machine," said Harish Agastya, director
of product marketing for server security at Trend Micro. "This model allows
you to sit on one machine [and] protect that machine but also protect other
machines."
Interest in
virtualization
has been growing as companies look to virtualize their data centers in
the name of cost-effectiveness. It was partly for that reason that
Trend Micro purchased Third Brigade in 2008 and has since rebranded and
released Third Brigade's virtualization intrusion prevention technology.
But while server virtualization can increase efficiency in the data center,
it also brings
security
challenges. Content security solutions that work in the physical world
often "leave security gaps when deployed in virtual environments," as
when offline VMs get infected because they are "unable to protect
themselves with a virus scan agent and signature updates," officials at
Trend Micro noted.
Likewise, "resource-intensive security operations such as scheduled
full-system scans can significantly degrade the performance of the host and render
the security ineffective, especially when initiated concurrently on multiple
virtual machines," officials said.
With those and other problems in mind, Trend Micro Core Protection for
Virtual Machines integrates with the VMware management infrastructure and
synchronizes continuously with vCenter to reduce management complexity and
allow for monitoring VM dynamics.
"As virtualization gains in popularity, it will bring forth new risks
to the security of the data center," Punit Minocha, vice president of
business development and incubation for Trend Micro, said in a statement. "Trend
Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines goes further than any other product
in the industry towards providing specialized content security for virtual
servers, both active and dormant, in today's dynamic data center."
Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines will be available both as a
stand-alone product and as part of the OSCE X Advanced Suite. The solution will
also be available as part of a new Virtualization Security suite that includes
Trend Micro Deep Security, and can be deployed either as a stand-alone product or
as a plug-in to OfficeScan Client/Server and managed through the OfficeScan
console.
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