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CloudPassage Halo-SVM and Fireware target cloud security

CloudPassage's Halo-SVM and Firewall are addressing a basic need to secure cloud computing environments.
Written by Dan Kusnetzky, Contributor

If the number of companies coming forward to brief me on their new products is a guide, security is finally becoming a top priority for cloud computing applications. CloudPassage is one of the companies that has taken the time to bring me up to date on what they're doing.

On January 26, 2011, the company introduced the Halo™ SVM (Server Vulnerability Management) and Halo™ Firewall. These products were designed from the ground up to address security needs for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)-based applications

What CloudPassage has to say

CloudPassage™, a pioneering security SaaS company, today emerged from stealth mode to unveil the industry’s first and only products specifically designed from the ground up to provide security for elastic cloud servers. Now, with CloudPassage, companies can manage their own cloud security by leveraging a single solution that is purpose-built for the cloud and that delivers multiple layers of defense for cloud servers.

With today’s company launch, CloudPassage also introduced its new product line of cloud security products.

  • Halo SVM addresses server vulnerability management needs with the scalability, speed and elasticity needed for cloud server environments. Built on the innovative Halo architecture, the Halo SVM product is unique in delivering completely accurate server exposure assessment with little impact to customers’ server resources. Halo SVM functions quickly and efficiently – thousands of server configuration points are assessed in seconds – enabling customers to maintain continuous exposure and compliance intelligence, even in rapidly growing cloud server farms.
  • Halo Firewall controls server attack surfaces by centralizing and automating host-based firewall management, the preferred alternative to traditional enterprise perimeter firewalls. The product provides customers with unified cloud-wide firewall policy management from a graphical web front-end, eliminating the untenable operational overhead and likely errors associated with manual host-based firewall management. The Halo Firewall product automatically updates individual host-based firewall configurations whenever cloud servers are added or removed – including server cloning or cloudbursting operations – with zero intervention by system administrators. The product also transparently addresses the issues of dynamic public-cloud IP addressing, cited by IaaS providers as a complication in cloud server firewall management. Halo Firewall enables customers to ensure strong, flexible network access control with the ease of management that parallels traditional enterprise firewalls.

Snapshot analysis

Many organizations that have moved applications into the cloud have not really addressed the need for security even though the service providers strongly suggest implementing firewalls and other security measures. The dynamic nature of their cloud implementations make it rather difficult to track virtual servers and make sure that they are all properly protected.

CloudPassage appears to be in the very beginning of launching a number of security products designed to address that business need. So are, of course, just about every other security software supplier I've spoken to.

CloudPassage appears to have some very innovative ideas. It is a company that I'm going to track over the coming years.

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