Catbird Security Integrates VMware vShield App

Virtualization security vendor Catbird Security is partnering with VMware to integrate VMWare vShield App firewalling capabilities into its flagship vSecurity product. The OEM deal combines vSecurity and vShield App controls into a single platform for broader security and compliance coverage and unified management.

The integration enables Catbird customers to leverage vShield security groups to control access between virtual machines in dynamically changing virtual data centers. Catbird vSecurity establishes TrustZones to create logical asset zones for applications and enforcement of policy across an enterprise virtual environment.

Catbird’s correlation engine collects network and security data to enforce security and compliance. The partnership, Catbird says, adds vShield’s control set for more comprehensive compliance coverage.

"Wrapping Catbird TrustZone around vShieldApp brings a much higher level of compliance and automation," says Edmundo Costa, Catbird CEO. "The key is TrustZone automating controls because Catbird is so context aware as things move in the virtual environment."

TrustZone policy enforcement will now apply to vShield controls to monitor and quarantine assets that drift out of compliance. In addition,vSheild App controls are wrapped into Catbird’s vCompliance, which monitors and audits controls for compliance against PCI, NIST, FISMA, DIACAP and other standards.

vShield App is a hypervisor-based application-aware firewall that leverages both deep packet inspection and connection control based on source and destination IP address. Catbird vSecurity applies a number of security services across a virtual environment, including vulnerability, configuration and change management, incident response access control, and auditand asset management. vSecurity, which supports both VMware and Xen, includes two components--a virtual appliance deployed at the hypervisor level on each host and a control center, which is typically deployed in the enterprise security operations center (SOC) but, alternatively, can be managed in Catbird’s SOC or at a service provider partner location.

Catbird previously partnered with Sourcefire to bring Snort IDS/IPS capabilities into vSecurity and, more recently, with McAfee to integrate endpoint security and McAfee’s ePO management platform. Future security partnerships may include technologies such as data loss prevention and additional firewalls, Costa says.

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