3Com Helps Secure Virtual Data Centres

3Com is expanding its Secure Network Fabric initiative with offerings designed to help large enterprises migrate to more virtualised data centres.

The new offerings, announced on 22 Feb, bring more centralised policy management to enterprise data centre security and networking operations, paving the way for greater network security in virtualised environments, according to 3Com officials.

Businesses are looking for ways to make their data centre operations more efficient, according to Ron Sege, president and chief operating officer of 3Com.

“Although the deployment of virtual networks provides organisations with the ability to design an efficient data centre that is easier to manage and more cost-effective, the business benefits could be negated by increased security exposure and the new complexities of today’s evolving threat landscape,” Sege said in a statement.

3Com first introduced its Secure Network Fabric strategy in August 2009 as a way of helping businesses take advantage of new data centre technologies, such as virtualisation, while minimising security risks. The initiative involves both 3Com’s H3C networking products and its TippingPoint network security business.

3Com currently is in the process of being bought for $2.7 billion (£1.7bn) by Hewlett-Packard, which is using the smaller company to build up the capabilities of HP’s ProCurve networking business.

During a news conference held on 17 Feb. to announce HP’s quarterly earnings, HP President and CEO Mark Hurd said the deal was moving along as scheduled and was expected to close in the second quarter. The European Commission approved the 3Com deal on 12 Feb.

Among the new offerings are three TippingPoint products, including the TippingPoint Secure Virtualization Framework. This framework enables businesses to pass virtual machine traffic through a TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System Platform, bringing TippingPoint’s security capabilities to virtualised environments.

TippingPoint 1500S is a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) appliance that decrypts and inspects Web traffic without impinging on network or application performance, and keeps encrypted attacks away from virtual and physical Web servers and applications.

TippingPoint ThreatLinq 2.0 enables businesses to create filter profiles that are customised for their own networks. Enterprises also can correlate new threats with the latest Digital Vaccine filters and create policies for their TippingPoint IPS platforms based on new threats.

3Com also introduced the H3C S9500E core switching platform for enterprise data centres. Company officials touted the product’s scalability, performance and energy efficiency. The platform also makes it easier for businesses to run their virtualised services on the network, 3Com said.