While external perimeter protection requirements will most likely command hardware acceleration and support for the foreseeable future, the distributed nature of the services inside the data center calls for a totally different set of specifications. Some vendors have recently claimed they can achieve micro-segmentation at data center scale while maintaining a hardware architecture. As I Read more...
Network security, for a long time, has worked off of the old Russian maxim, “trust but verify.” Trust a user, but verify it’s them. However, today’s network landscape — where the Internet of Things, the Cloud, and more are introducing new vulnerabilities — makes the “verify” part of “trust but verify” difficult and inefficient. We Read more...
What will be our security challenge in the coming decade? Running trusted services even on untrusted infrastructure. That means protecting the confidentiality and integrity of data as it moves through the network. One possible solution – distributed network encryption – a new approach made possible by network virtualization and the software-defined data center that addresses Read more...
VMware NSX has been around for more than two years now, and in that time software-defined networking and network virtualization have become inextricably integrated into modern data center architecture. It seems like an inconceivable amount of progress has been made. But the reality is that we’re only at the beginning of this journey. The transformation Read more...
In the last post, VMware NSX™ Distributed Firewall installation and operation was verified. In this entry, the FTP (file transfer protocol) ALG (Application Level Gateway) is tested for associating data connections with originating control connections – something a stateless ACL (access control list) can’t do. An added benefit over stateless ACLs – most compliance standards more easily Read more...
In Part 1, I covered traditional segmentation options. Here, I introduce VMware NSX Distributed Firewall for micro-segmentation, showing step-by-step how it can be deployed in an existing vSphere environment. Now, I have always wanted a distributed firewall. Never understood why I had to allow any more access to my servers than was absolutely necessary. Why Read more...
Who saw it coming that segmentation would be a popular term in 2015?!? Gartner analyst Greg Young was almost apologetic when he kicked off the Network Segmentation Best Practices session at the last Gartner Security Summit. As a professional with a long history in the enterprise firewall space, I know I found it odd at Read more...
Applications are a vital component of your business…but are your applications and data safe? Have you considered implementing a Zero Trust model at your organization to protect your vital resources? Join this hour-long webcast on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 11:00 AM PST / 2:00 PM EST to find out how to leverage micro-segmentation to Read more...
Last week at VMworld, Pat Gelsinger made a statement that got folks buzzing. During his keynote, he said that integrating security into the virtualization layer would result in organizations being twice as secure at half the cost. As a long-time security guy, statements like that can seem a little bold, but VMware has data, and Read more...
NSX 6.2 was released on August 20, 2015. One of the key features in NSX 6.2 is Cross vCenter Networking and Security. This new capability scales NSX vSphere across vCenter boundaries. Now, one can span logical networking and security constructs across vCenter boundaries irrespective of whether the vCenters are in adjacent racks or across datacenters Read more...
