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Trend Micro’s cloud security software, dubbed Deep Security, can now be managed using Microsoft Azure Security Center dashboards, the company said this week.
Announced during AzureCon on Sept. 29, Azure Security Center is a unified dashboard that provides threat-detection capabilities courtesy of threat-intelligence data gathered by Microsoft. It also enables administrators to configure virtual machine firewalls, set security policies and apply anti-malware protection.
“As customers embrace Azure, they need easy-to-manage security solutions to protect workloads from malware and network attacks, as well as achieve compliance,” Trend Micro’s Bill McGee, senior vice president, cloud and data center security, said in a statement. On Azure, Deep Security “automates provisioning of workload-aware security for rapid protection of virtual machines from software vulnerabilities, including Shellshock and Heartbleed.”
Last year, the IT industry was rocked by that pair of vulnerabilities, which affected many Linux distributions. Shellshock, a flaw in the Bash command-line software tool, could be exploited to launch massive automated attacks on Linux-based Web servers. Heartbleed, a vulnerability in Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), the basis of all Web-based communications, made it possible for an attacker to pluck contents of a Web server’s memory, potentially providing an unauthorized person with access to ostensibly secure communications between a server and client systems.
Trend Micro’s Deep Security product cloaks Azure virtual machines with zero-day anti-malware protection, along with intrusion detection and prevention capabilities.
“With Deep Security, you can detect and remove malware in real-time, protect against known and unknown vulnerabilities, including zero-day attacks,” wrote Lauren Newby, product marketing manager at Trend Micro, in a company blog post. “You can also detect suspicious or malicious activity, including integrity monitoring required to meet compliance with key regulations, including PCI DSS 3.1, HIPAA, and others.”
The product also offers automated deployment and management. “Deep Security monitors your Azure environment, automatically recognizing and provisioning security to new instances,” added Newby. “Plus, Deep Security automates repetitive, resource-intensive security tasks, such as provisioning and deprovisioning, to dramatically reduce operational cost and time.”
Nicole Herskowitz, senior director of product marketing at Microsoft Azure, said in a statement that “the dynamic nature of the environment means traditional data center approaches simply don’t fit” with the concept of shared responsibility as it pertains to cloud environments. “With the dynamic capabilities of Trend Micro Deep Security integrated in the Azure Security Center, customers will now be able to easily identify security and configuration issues, and quickly address them.”
Microsoft, bruised by the long battles to secure its Windows software ecosystem, is taking cloud security seriously. Last month, at the Government Cloud Forum in Washington, D.C., CEO Satya Nadella announced a new, cross-discipline Cyber Defense Operations Center to combat security threats affecting cloud-connected enterprises.
“Now we’re even bringing together the operational security people across our company, people running everything from Xbox Live to Office 365, to Azure, to Windows Update, to Windows Defender, and bringing them together in one operations center,” said Nadella in his Nov. 17 speech. “We actually have people who are able to, in real time, connect the dots between what’s happening across all of these services.”