HyTrust Tracks Users In Virtual Environments

HyTrust said it updated its role monitoring appliance for virtual environments with the ability to evaluate every user operation and issue an alert if and when user behavior conflicts with an assigned role.

HyTrust Appliance 3.5 monitors, logs and evaluates administrative actions and compares what users are doing to what they are permitted to do in order to prevent security breaches, such as copying a virtual machine with confidential data, deleting the entire virtual data center or misconfiguring workloads in a shared infrastructure.

Additional capabilities in the new appliance include granular role-based and resource-based authorization, logs that enable audit trails tied to individual user activity and multifactor authentication. It also includes support for VMware’s Security Hardening Guide 5.1.

Judith Hurwitz, president of research firm Hurwitz & Associates, says one of the biggest risks inherent in virtualization is how easy it is to set up a virtual image that opens up potential security holes, particularly images that have been abandoned. Threats may come from departed employees with privileges that have not been revoked.

HyTrust’s partnership with VMware has given the company a deep understanding of how images are created within VMware to effectively automate governance; the configured appliance is plugged into the network infrastructure, she says.

Hurwitz says HyTrust has little competition in this space aside from IBM, although Dell is beginning to develop capabilities. She adds that other technologies will emerge as software-defined networks and data centers become more prevalent.

HyTrust recently raised $18.5 million; investors include Intel, Fortinet, Cisco and VMware. The new product is available now. Pricing starts at $63,750 for a single data center site with 20 ESXi CPU sockets.

Cisco Introduces New Network Processor

Cisco debuted its nPower X1 processor this week, which the company says is purpose-built for software-defined networking and capable of 400-Gbps throughput from a single chip. Cisco’s previous chips required more than one chip to deliver 140 Gbps.

The development of 400-Gbps network processors has been driven by IP traffic growth, Heavy Reading’s senior analyst Sterling Perrin notes in blog post. However, lab tests suggest there may be “wide variations between what is claimed on spec sheets and the real world performance that is achievable," he writes.

According to Cisco engineering VP Nikhil Jayaram, the new chip has sophisticated programmable control using open APIs and advanced compute operations that makes it ideal for SDNs while handling extremely high event rates. All packet processing, traffic management and input/output functions are integrated on a single nPower X1 chip to enable multiterabit network performance.Cisco will reveal more about the nPower X1 later this month.

Intel Unveils Latest SSDs

Intel launched a new line of solid-state drives designed for business-class PCs. The product line includes the company’s Solid-State Pro 1500 Series, which will include AES 256-bit encryption and support for the Trusted Computing Group’s Opal key management protocol. The line also supports remote management and allows IT staff to monitor storage health to reduce downtime due to failures.

The Intel SSD Pro 1500 Series is designed to work with the fourth-generation Intel Core processors with Intel vPro technology and is based on a 6-Gbps SATA SandForce SF-2281 controller. The drives will be available in 80-Gbyte, 120-Gbyte, 180-Gbyte, 240-Gbyte, 360-Gbyte and 480-Gbyte capacities, and most in both 2.5-inch/7mm and the new M.2 form factors. The exception is the 480-Gbyte edition, which is only available in 2.5-inch/7mm SATA.

[Read how Western Digital's $685 million acquisition of PCIe flash specialist Virident lets it compete with flash giants such as Intel/Micron in "Western Digital Buys Virident To Battle Flash Giants."]

Intel says its slimmer M.2 form factor features advanced low-power modes that reduce idle power by more than 90% compared with HDDs, and that the reliability of SSDs improve employee productivity by reducing downtime as well as the amount of time IT spends performing desk-side support.

Earlier this year Intel introduced the S3500 Series SSDs aimed at cloud computing environments.

New Glowpoint Videoconferencing Service

Cloud-based video collaboration provider Glowpoint launched a reservation-less videoconferencing service that can be used on any device. Glowpoint Now makes use of the vendor’s existing cloud infrastructure to allow users to start a video collaboration session from a Web browser and quickly schedule meetings.

Users can invite participants through Outlook, for example, and start or join a meeting from a Web browser, including IE, Firefox and Chrome. Glowpoint Now also works with other UC products, including Microsoft Lync and Cisco Jabber. Other features include management and reporting to monitor usage, performance and trends.

Videoconferencing infrastructure, once a significant IT investment requiring dedicated facilities and expensive equipment, has fast become accessible to any device across multiple platforms. Polycom, for example, recently launched its RealPresence Mobile 3.0 and Desktop 3.0 video collaboration software, which includes better content-sharing capabilities and support for more devices, while its CloudAXIS Suite extends video collaboration to any Web browser.

According to IDC, the worldwide enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence equipment market declined 13.2% year over year in the first quarter of 2013 with revenue of $563.4 million, the worst result since the second quarter of 2010. IDC says the decline is attributable in part to enterprises seeking more software- and cloud-based services.

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