Trend Aims To Secure The Cloud

Trend Micro launched two producs for security in the cloud and virtualised environments, at the VMworld 2010 event this week.

Trend Micro Deep Security 7.5 uses the latest VMware vShield Endpoint API (announced at VMworld) and now includes an agent-less anti-malware module.

Agent-less security on VMs

By integrating the vShield APIs, Trend Micro is able to provide completely agent-less security for VMs (virtual machines), Harish Agastya, director of data center security marketing at Trend Micro told eWEEK: “No need to put an agent on any of those VMs, so no need to configure it, reconfigure it, patch it…we’ve taken all of that headache away from the administrator.”

The new module adds to the product’s existing toolkit of protections, which includes among other things deep packet inspection, integrity monitoring and intrusion detection and prevention.

In addition to Deep Security, Trend Micro also announced a beta release of SecureCloud, a hosted key management and data encryption service designed to give enterprises more control over data stored in public, private or hybrid clouds, which may go some way to addressing the frequently expressed confusion amongst businesses about the cloud.

“The challenge that we are addressing is one of control,” said Todd Thieman, senior director of data centre security marketing at Trend Micro. “If you look at what the cloud does in terms of controlling data, it poses some new challenges.”

The technology will facilitate the movement between the data centre and the cloud, he added. With SecureCloud, enterprises can decide when and where keys are released and secure volumes are accessed as well as establish accountability over data access and key deployment with logging and audit functionality.

“The cloud’s been the sexy topic du jour; a lot of people are talking about how they want to use it and that security is a significant inhibitor,” Thieman said. “While there’s a lot of talk…we’re delivering substance so enterprises can go out there and take advantage of the cloud economics and the flexibility that the cloud has to offer.”

Delivered via software as a service, SecureCloud supports Amazon EC2, Eucalyptus or VMware vCloud. The product is expected to be generally available in the fourth quarter of 2010. Organisations interested in the beta can apply here.