[September 01, 2011] Juniper Networks Adds Antivirus Protections to Cloud Computing Defense Platform Tweet Aug 31, 2011 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) -- At VMworld 2011, Juniper Networks reported it introduced significant additions to the Juniper Networks vGW Virtual Gateway solution for customers looking for a virtualization security platform. The Company said that new functionalities will provide virtualization-specific antivirus (AV) protections and continuous monitoring against malware and hackers, while simultaneously ensuring that security does not impede virtualized workload performance or present a barrier to implementing large-scale virtualized environments. Juniper Networks noted that added to vGW Virtual Gateway version 5.0 are increased protection, scalability and compliance features for virtualized workloads. vGW 5.0 integrates monitoring, firewall, intrusion detection and compliance capabilities with new layers of defenses including antivirus protection, hypervisor compliance monitoring, and large-scale virtualization security management capabilities, making it a universal threat management (UTM) solution for cloud computing. "Businesses have a lot to gain from optimizing their data center operations through virtualization, and security concerns should not impede those potentially huge cost savings," said Douglas Murray, senior VP and GM, security business unit at Juniper Networks. "The latest version of our vGW Series not only enhances security protections without compromising capacity, but enables scalable management across global virtualized environments with multiple data centers." "Juniper provides an innovative solution to integrate physical and virtual network security at scale with vGW Virtual Gateway and the SRX series," said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. "With vGW 5.0 Virtual Gateway, Juniper provides a tightly-integrated virtual solution for defense-in-depth protection and centralized security management." In a release, the Company noted details of vGW 5.0: The vGW 5.0 antivirus feature secures VMs against resident malware and other programs designed to hide in files and VMs in order to disrupt business or rob organizations of mission-critical information. The vGW 5.0 AV protections can detect the malware or viruses and quarantine the infected files or infected guest VMs themselves. The vGW 5.0 antivirus engine provides optional on-demand scanning so that administrators can scan VMs offline at optimal off peak times when network resource use is low. The vGW 5.0 virtualization-specific approach to AV offers numerous scanning options, allowing organizations to y optimize their antivirus protections for performance and intelligent scanning. The net effect is optimal VM host performance even when what is traditionally CPU and RAM-intensive AV security is turned on. Additional vGW Virtual Gateway 5.0 enhancements include: -VM gold image enforcement provides a compliance checking mechanism and continuous monitoring of desired security state with alerting and mitigation options for instances when that state is negatively impacted. -Multi-center/management support that synthesizes security policies for large-scale deployments into a single manageable whole, across geographies and data center locations. -Split-center management capabilities that segment information contained in one VMware vCenter Server instance into multiple, independently-managed vGW to enhance resource isolation for cloud services or multi-tenancy. -Tree search features along Smart Group expression builder and the ability to quarantine VMs that become non-compliant supporting search, classification and mitigation across a number of tenants. "VMware encourages and supports its security partners to extend upon our virtualization platform in order to enable the secured, continuous operation of the virtualized data center," said Parag Patel, VP, global strategic alliances at VMware. "Purpose-built virtualization security is a must-have component for any organization whose cloud computing environment includes high-value business enabling workloads." Juniper Networks delivers the software, silicon and systems that transform the experience and economics of networking. More Information: www.juniper.net ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]