Altor Unveils The Altor VF 3.0: VMsafe Virtual Firewall With Intrusion Detection

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Altor Networks, provider of best-in-class virtualization and cloud security solutions, today announced the Altor VF 3.0 virtual firewall with integrated intrusion detection. Developed using VMsafe APIs, the Altor VF offers robust defense-in-depth virtualization security with mission critical reliability and value through breakthrough fast-path performance.

"Integration with VMsafe enables the performance that large service providers need to significantly scale both computing power and hosting infrastructure," said Kenneth Owens, technical VP for security and server technologies at Savvis, Inc. (NASDAQ:SVVS), an outsourcing provider of managed computing and network infrastructure for IT applications. "Software developers that make their toolkits (SDKs) available provide us with a way to scale compatibly with our provisioning system while securely separating one customer's traffic from another."

The Altor VF is the first product to be integrated with VMware (NASDAQ:VMW) VMsafe network APIs in fast-path mode, where security inspections are processed in the hypervisor kernel. As a result, customers deploying the Altor VF will benefit from increased performance, achieving approximately ten times greater throughput than virtual firewalls running in a Virtual Machine (i.e., bridge mode), as well as greater security and reduced complexity.

"Customers can realize higher virtualization ROI by maximizing the number of secure VMs on each physical host while meeting their security compliance requirements," said Amir Ben-Efraim, CEO of Altor Networks. "The Altor VF 3.0 exceeds the most stringent enterprise requirements for defense-in-depth in the virtual and internal cloud environment, without compromising any of the performance, reliability and flexibility benefits offered by virtualization."

"Hypervisor-level security interfaces are not a panacea, but they do offer the potential for significant gains in defense-in-depth and performance when used to secure the virtual infrastructure," said Neil MacDonald, VP and Gartner Fellow. "Virtualization creates a new platform to deliver security functionality in a dynamic way, removing many of the physical barriers to adoption of security controls throughout our next-generation data center and private cloud infrastructures - either running in guest VM or in the hypervisor itself."Security policy is applied at an individual-VM level and enforcement of this policy occurs within the Kernel. VMs are protected without requiring security agents on the guest, complicated network reconfigurations, or performance degrading remapping of network flows.

The Altor VF delivers defense-in-depth with virtual-aware intrusion detection for up-to-date protection against emerging threats with a security-signature update service. Purpose-built for the virtual environment, the Altor VF enables secure usage of unique virtualization features, such as vMotion, and provides ease of administration and tight integration with vCenter.

Altor VF 3.0 Best in Class Virtualization Security:
Defense-In-Depth
- Integrated Intrusion Detection
- Hypervisor Monitoring and Protection
- Virtualization Security SDK
Value Through Price Performance
- 10x performance gain via VMsafe fast-path

Mission Critical Reliability
- High-Availablity Architecture
- Fault-tolerant installation process
For more information on Altor VF 3.0, please visit: www.altornetworks.com/products
About Altor Networks
Altor Networks is pioneering best-in-class virtualization security solutions to secure production-oriented virtualized data centers and internal clouds. The company's initial product line includes the industry's first-ever purpose-built virtual firewall with integrated intrusion detection, a software security appliance that runs in a virtualized environment and enforces security policy on a per virtual machine basis. Data center administrators can pinpoint a broad range of virtual network security compromises and easily create roles-based security policies. Security policies can be continuously enforced on individual virtual machines, even as they move throughout the virtualized data center. Founded by security and networking experts from Check Point Software, Cisco, NetApp and Oracle, Altor Networks is funded by Accel Partners and Foundation Capital and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit www.altornetworks.com.