- VMware announced new innovations across its expanding networking and security portfolio, VMware Explore 2022.
- Project Northstar delivers multi-cloud networking, security, workload mobility, and end-to-end threat detection and response with a centralized cloud console.
- The latest updates also allow NSX networking and security functions to be implemented on Data Processing Units connected to the host hypervisor.
VMware is expanding its networking and security portfolio with new innovations which aim to help customers embrace the cloud operating model. Some of these new innovations are:
- Project Northstar for multi-cloud networking, security, and end-to-end visibility
- Expansion of network detection and visibility to the Carbon Black Cloud endpoint protection platform, with early access available now
- Project Trinidad extends and advances VMware’s API security and analytics
- Project Watch, a new approach to multi-cloud networking and security that provides an advanced app-to-app policy controls
Project Northstar
VMware announced the technology preview of a major advancement of its NSX platform. To improve consistent and simplified SaaS consumption, Project Northstar is focusing on delivering multi-cloud networking, security, workload mobility, and end-to-end threat detection and response with a centralized cloud console. It includes network & security policy management, network detection and response, network visibility and analytics, advanced load balancing, and workload mobility for private cloud environments and VMware Cloud deployments.
The latest update to VMware NSX 4.0 and VMware vSphere 8 enable users to implement networking and security functions on Data Processing Units connected to the host hypervisor. Offloading NSX services to the DPU is capable of accelerating networking and security functions without impacting the host CPUs, addressing the needs of modern, network-intensive, and latency-sensitive applications.
Expanding security
VMware introduced the elastic application security edge, allowing the networking and security infrastructure at the data center or cloud edge to flex and adjust as app needs change. It enables users to preserve their investments in hardware appliances that can’t adapt to changing app environments. VMware introduces:
- VMware NSX Gateway Firewall: VMware’s next-generation firewall now offers a new stateful active-active edge scale-out capability that significantly increases network throughput for stateful services. VMware now offers advanced threat prevention capabilities with IDPS, malware analysis, sandboxing, URL filtering, TLS proxy, stateful firewall, and stateful Network Address Translation (NAT) that extend centralized security controls to physical and virtual workloads at the data center and cloud edge.
- VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer: With a goal to deliver multi-layer application security at the edge, closer to applications and users for better efficiency and performance, VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer (ALB) is adding new bot management capabilities, while enhancing the security capabilities of its web application firewall, malware detection, security analytics, and DDoS protection. These enhancements at the edge help customers maintain a consistent security posture with operational simplicity, extending protection from traditional to cloud-native container-based applications deployed across multi-cloud environments. VMware NSX ALB’s ability to enforce API security policies in line with application delivery traffic helps customers in protecting their north-south APIs.
- Project Watch: At VMware Explore 2022, VMware is unveiling Project Watch, a new approach to multi-cloud networking and security that will provide advanced app-to-app policy controls to help with continuous risk and compliance assessment. In technology preview, Project Watch will help network security and compliance teams to continuously observe, assess, and dynamically mitigate risk and compliance problems in composite multi-cloud applications.
Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Networking and Advanced Security business group said,
« Enterprises are facing an unprecedented level of threat and complexity as they operate in today’s multi-cloud world. VMware is radically transforming how our customers consume networking and security, allowing them to realize the agility and efficiencies of the cloud operating model through a cloud-smart approach. With a privileged position in the infrastructure and a scale out distributed software architecture, we’re able to leverage the intrinsic attributes of our platforms and deliver these unique solutions in a consumption-oriented manner. »