TippingPoint Introduces New Products To Secure Virtualized Next-Generation Data Centers

TippingPoint, a leader in network security and a division of 3Com (NASDAQ: COMS), today introduced the TippingPoint Virtual Controller (vController), a software solution that extends the company’s best-of-breed network security into virtual environments, providing customers with uncompromised security into all parts of the data center. Harnessing security research from TippingPoint’s Digital Vaccine® Labs (DVLabs) team and the Zero Day Initiative, the vController provides a comprehensive data center security solution that addresses the unique challenges of securing both virtual and physical infrastructure. The vController is the first product in TippingPoint’s Secure Virtualization Framework, the company’s vision for securing all elements of the data center and a core element of 3Com’s Secure Network Fabric, which combines security technology from TippingPoint with LAN infrastructure equipment from H3C, the enterprise networking brand of 3Com.

Rapid expansion of production and mission critical, virtualized workloads is driving organizations to define the virtualization platform itself as mission critical. As a mission critical platform, organizations must address unique virtualization security challenges while also ensuring virtual infrastructure meets, or exceeds, their existing compliance requirements and security controls.

“We’ve consolidated more than 50 percent of our physical servers onto just 12 hosts – this means we have some of our most important systems running in a virtual environment,” said Kris Jmaeff, information security systems specialist at the Interior Health Authority, a British Columbia government agency. “With so much invested in this infrastructure and attacks like Conficker threatening to take it down, I need to be completely confident in the security technologies protecting my systems.”

TippingPoint vController Provides Immediate Security for Virtual Traffic

The SVF software will enable organizations to pass virtual machine (VM) traffic – including host-to-host traffic – through a TippingPoint® Intrusion Prevention System. This product takes advantage of the specialized processing performance built into TippingPoint’s N-Platform, including a newly redesigned and more powerful Threat Suppression Engine (TSE) that can effectively inspect more traffic. Since the traffic is passed through the IPS, it is inspected and filtered with TippingPoint’s industry leading Digital Vaccine service, which uses security intelligence from TippingPoint’s DVLabs, as well as its external research program the Zero Day Initiative, to provide data center organizations with the most up-to-date network protection.

“Security attacks are increasingly targeted and financially driven. As enterprises move production applications with their rich information to virtual environments, they represent an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals,” said Paula Musich, senior analyst with Current Analysis. “As more mission critical data moves into a virtualized infrastructure it is imperative that virtual environments meet the same stringent security requirements as their physical counterparts.”