Trend Micro Moves To Protect The Cloud

With server virtualisation becoming increasingly commonplace, Trend Micro has updated its flagship Deep Security product in order to protect cloud-based servers.

It was only last year when Trend opted to deliver security to desktop PCs via the cloud, but now it is seeking to protect the cloud itself with Deep Security 7.0.

The company cited independent research that indicate 95 percent of data centres in 2009 are employing virtualisation technology and 60 percent of production virtual machines are less secure than their physical counterparts. It also pointed out that 88 percent of North American companies do not even have a virtualisation security strategy.

Trend believes that the shift to remotely hosted, virtualised infrastructure has created risks not adequately addressed by existing security techniques.

“With data centres becoming more dynamic, traditional security solutions break down due to unique challenges imposed by virtualisation and the ever increasing sophistication of for-profit attackers,” said Thomas Miller, executive general manager of the enterprise business unit, Trend Micro, in a statement.

“With cloud computing, servers, like laptops before them, are moving outside the security perimeter and can be co-located with unknown and potentially malicious servers,” he added. “Trend Micro server security solutions enable protection for virtual and cloud-based servers that are susceptible to these unique risks and challenges currently not addressed by existing security solutions.”

Deep Security is one of the first to use VMware’s VMsafe API, which allows security technology to be integrated directly into the hypervisor. It includes a deep packet inspection engine with intrusion detection/prevention (IDS/IPS), web application protection and network-level application control; firewall, integrity monitoring and log inspection modules.

This protection is available for both physical and virtual systems using server-based software agents. It will also eventually use virtual security appliances specifically designed for VMware VI3 and vSphere 4 environments.

Deep Security 7.0 is slated to arrive in November and is available for traditional physical servers on a per server basis starting at $885 (£542) per server. A virtual server license is also available for VMware environments with unlimited agents per host machine starting at $2,100 (£1,286) per socket.