Software-Defined Security solution for virtual and hybrid datacentres

Catbird is announcing the launch of its award-winning Software-Defined Security solution, vSecurity® 5.5. vSecurity gives IT networking and security personnel in regulated software-defined datacentres the control and assurance they need to pass their audits confidently. The company is also announcing the establishment of its European HQ in the United Kingdom to be headed up by Pedro Beitra whose previous roles include Senior Business Development Director at Citrix and CEO of VMCi.

Catbird vSecurity® is a network-based Software-defined Security (SDS) solution, removing the need for expensive network security hardware to secure the virtual and cloud datacentre. vSecurity secures virtualised network components from within the virtual infrastructure. Just as virtualisation abstracts computing away from physical hardware, software-defined security untethers security from expensive single-purpose hardware security appliances to provide a more adaptive, agile and less expensive solution.

The latest vSecurity release provides advanced Vulnerability Monitoring along with Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP), Network Segmentation and TrustZones®, Network Flow Mapping, Policy Establishment and Enforcement, Access Control and Firewalling (integrated with VMware vCloud Networking and Security™), and control orchestration and automation to monitor and enforce controls for compliance with PCI, FISMA, NIST, HIPAA and other standards in virtualised datacentres.

Security and compliance are increasingly critical requirements of enterprise virtualisation and private cloud roll-outs. Traditional physical datacentre network security architectures are rigid and complex, limiting their effectiveness in software-defined datacentres, which are characterised by transience and mobility. Catbird’s software-defined security tackles this problem with an innovative architecture that integrates security into the virtualised network itself. vSecurity is context-aware, adaptive and can be scaled to the size of the datacentre itself, requiring no more or no less security than is actually needed.

“Virtualisation and cloud-based data centres continue to expand in Europe. Catbird will have an essential role in accelerating this growth by ensuring the security of these deployments,” noted Pedro Beitra, GM of Catbird Europe. “We think the market is ready to take secure virtualisation to the next level.”

“Virtualisation has fundamentally changed the way network security controls are employed. This is a game-changer for IT security managers and auditors looking to safely expand their virtualised datacentres to include mission-critical, regulated assets,” said Edmundo Costa, Catbird CEO. “Catbird’s vSecurity approach means that IT can now take full advantage of the benefits and cost savings of virtualisation, without compromising on security or compliance.”

“Accelerating the adoption of virtualised infrastructure and enabling IT to operate at cloud scale is one of the first steps in realising the benefits of the software-defined datacentre, “said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “Catbird’s integration of VMware vCloud Networking and Security™ with vSecurity 5.5 can accelerate the adoption of virtualised infrastructure in even the most sensitive of datacentres.”