Sourcefire moves to secure VMs

Testing soft applicance-based virtual defence centre

Intrusion-detection and prevention software developer, Sourcefire Inc has come out with a system that will inspect data traffic running between virtual machines. 

Its software appliance runs on the ESX and ESXi virtualisation platforms from VMware as well as on that company’s vSphere cloud-compute environment, and is currently in beta.

It will become available during the second half of 2009.

The Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 Virtual Appliance will allow organisations to inspect traffic between virtual machines (VMs), while also making it easier to deploy and manage sensors at remote sites where resource may be limited, the company said.

It could be deployed to secure traffic between VMs or between a virtual host and a VM.

Sourcefire’s 3D System refers to a process the company uses to adapt its systems to real-time threats and changes, before, during, and after cyber attacks.

It uses three protection phases of IPS, Adaptive IPS, and Enterprise Threat Management, with each phase building upon the benefits and features of the previous one. 

The Snort originator said its launch of the System 4.9 Virtual Appliance addresses the need to secure virtualisation, protecting virtual infrastructure from internal and external attacks with virtual security appliances, and also the need to virtualise security. 

Use of virtual software-based security appliances is said to offer cost-advantages in security, but reportedly does not perform at the speed of a hard appliance.

The new system also features some new policy management capabilities for enterprise networks using cloud or virtual implementations.

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