Intel’s security group is unveiling a tool that is designed to make it easier for businesses to secure their software-defined data center environments.
The Intel Security Controller is the first product from the Intel Security unit, which is largely based on the McAfee technology the chip maker inherited when it bought the security company in 2011. It’s part of Intel’s larger effort to expand its presence in the data center and be a central tech player in the growing software-defined data center (SDDC) push.
Intel announced the security controller Aug. 25 at the VMworld 2014 show in San Francisco. In addition, the McAfee unit also announced enhancements to its Server Security Suites solutions.
The initial release of the security controller is designed to integrate the McAfee Virtual Network Security Platform to enable automated provisioning, protection and remediation for both physical and virtual systems within environments using VMware’s NSX network virtualization solution. The McAfee security platform has been optimized for systems powered by Intel’s Xeon server chips.
According to Intel officials, a controller acts as the go-between for McAfee Network Security Manager appliances and deployments of NSX and VMware’s vCenter technologies. The controller allows for the synchronization of security policy management and enforcement.
Intel’s security controller will be available for beta testing in September, and will be available to businesses running the McAfee Virtual Network Security Platform in the fall. Another version due out by mid-2015 will support the OpenStack platform, according to Intel officials.
The improvements to McAfee’s Server Security Suites portfolio range from enhancing a business’ ability to discover data center workloads to securely adding server instances into a public cloud. The solutions include the Server Security Suite Essentials, which offers blacklisting capabilities and security for virtual environments on a range of server types. Server Security Suite Advanced also includes whitelisting.
With the suites, organizations could automatically provision and manage virtual machines via Data Center Connectors optimized for Amazon Web Services and VMware vSphere private and public cloud environments. In the latest versions, that capability is now also available for OpenStack and Microsoft Azure clouds.