Symantec and VMware Target Virtual and Cloud Protection

At the RSA Conference 2012 in San Francisco, Symantec and VMware announced a partnership to provide security protection for virtual and cloud environments.


Symantec is initially delivering five security integrations with the VMware cloud infrastructure suite: data loss prevention, IT risk and compliance, data center protection, security information and event management (SIEM) and endpoint protection solutions.


"Companies today face an increasingly toxic threat landscape. True information protection is more than antivirus. With our new VMware integrations, we're enabling customers to proactively protect their information whether it's in a physical or virtual environment,�? said Francis deSouza, group president, enterprise products and services, Symantec. “Together, Symantec and VMware are taking protection to the next level to give companies confidence to fully embrace virtualization and realize the cost savings and efficiency it brings."


The integration of Symantec Data Loss Prevention with VMware vShield App enables Symantec customers to more easily find and locate their most valuable information across their virtual environments., Symantec Data Loss Prevention makes it easier for customers to identify and remediate potential data loss in their virtual environments by automatically separating virtual machines that contain sensitive information from those that do not.


Symantec Control Compliance Suite uses centralized vulnerability and control assessments to provide seamless discovery of unknown or unauthorized virtual machines to reduce security risk in the physical and virtual infrastructure.


Symantec Critical System Protection currently protects ESX guest and hypervisors with granular, policy-based controls.


Symantec Security Information Manager (SSIM) will enable organizations to seamlessly identify and respond to security threats that impact business critical applications across both their physical and virtual infrastructures. Through integration with the VMware vShield log management collector, SSIM will correlate virtual machine activity with events from the physical environment as well as the Symantec's global intelligence network to give a holistic view of an organization's security posture.


Symantec's Managed Security Service (MSS) will also offer a VMware vShield log management collector to allow customers who prefer a cloud-based service delivery model to benefit from a seamless view of security threats across both their physical and virtual environments.


Symantec also plans to leverage VMware vShield Endpoint with its endpoint security offerings to maximize performance in Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and virtual server environments. These solutions will offload critical security analysis from protected virtual machines to a dedicated security virtual appliance resulting in optimized scan performance, reduced resource utilization, and increased management visibility.
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