Altor Networks Announces Altor 4.0; Smashes Virtualization and Cloud Adoption Barriers

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Altor Networks, a leading innovator and provider of security for virtualized data centers and clouds, today introduced the latest version of its flagship product, Altor 4.0. This release is packed with breakthrough security innovations that leverage virtual machine introspection to bring X-Ray like visibility to internal virtual machine (VM) states, delivering accurate compliance assessment and automated security enforcement. In addition to a comprehensive platform for protecting their virtual data center and cloud deployments, Altor customers derive immediate value from v4.0 in the form of a detailed virtual infrastructure audit and assessment of virtual machine risk states, according to common industry best-practices and leading compliance regulations.

“Our vantage point in the virtualized fabric lets us pinpoint the weak spots for customers and seal them with the strongest possible security [policies/controls], while leveraging automation to simplify administration, monitor VM compliance and avoid costly errors.”

“Companies turn to Virtustream and our xStream cloud computing platform to realize the benefits of cloud computing while lowering total cost of ownership, increasing uptime and deploying applications to scalable infrastructure,” says Julian Box, chief technology officer of Virtustream, an infrastructure services firm. “Based on our long history deploying virtual environments, we have incorporated several different security technologies into our cloud computing platform, including Altor’s solution, which provides a granular view of the network traffic within the cloud.”

Leveraging its unique hypervisor-based footprint, Altor 4.0 automatically detects unauthorized changes to VMs in virtual and cloud environments, and can selectively quarantine the offending VMs while alerting IT administrators about the exceptions to corporate policy. Altor’s 4.0 also inspects all traffic to and from each VM to eliminate blind spots, and enforces policies at the global, group, and per-VM level. With the Altor 4.0, enterprises can granularly define security policies within zones of trust and precisely control how VMs within these zones can communicate with one another, ensuring isolation between and within trust levels and allowing for precise micro-segmentation.

“More and more companies are broadening their virtualization deployment across the IT infrastructure,” said Brett Waldman, senior research analyst for Software Appliances and Virtualization at IDC. “However, as companies virtualization solutions mature towards a private cloud scenario, they are finding existing networking and security solutions are being stressed to their limits. Simultaneously, VM density is increasing per server, putting more eggs into a single basket and making each server a mission-critical server. To address these challenges it is time for a new security paradigm purpose-built for virtualization.”

Altor 4.0 brings forward powerful new features that automate security and compliance enforcement within virtualized datacenters and clouds. By leveraging Introspection to collect VM attributes, such as installed applications, and coupling it with Altor’s deep knowledge of the virtual network, Altor 4.0 creates a powerful database of control points by which security policies and compliance rules can be defined. Altor makes this rich data available in intuitive user interfaces (UIs) that let administrators build the entire range of policies from corporate rules on global protocol handling to discrete regulation and compliance driven policies for how VMs should be configured. Built-in templates help jumpstart the process of building policies while intuitive tools make quick work of customizing the rulesets.

“Altor has led the virtualization security market on a number of fronts with a purpose-built, hypervisor-based and now VM Introspection-powered approach that is unique to the industry,” said Amir Ben-Efraim, CEO and co-founder of Altor Networks. “Our vantage point in the virtualized fabric lets us pinpoint the weak spots for customers and seal them with the strongest possible security [policies/controls], while leveraging automation to simplify administration, monitor VM compliance and avoid costly errors.”

Altor 4.0 adds significant enhancements that improve the security posture for both new and existing customers.

Features available in the release of Altor 4.0 include:

Visibility: full view of all inter-VM network communication. Deep knowledge of internal VM state including installed applications and services through VM Introspection.
Compliance: enforcement of corporate and regulatory policies for required applications, services and VM settings. Segregation of duties via policy automation to ensure VMs are assigned to the right trust zones inside the virtual environment.
Control: access control over all inter-VM network traffic via firewall policies and enforcement. Deep inspection of allowed traffic for malware suppression and intrusion detection.

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Pricing and Availability

The Altor 4.0 is currently in beta and will be available in early Q3’10. Pricing starts at $1,500.00 per CPU socket. Evaluation copies are available at Altor’s website:

www.altornetworks.com.

About Altor Networks

Altor Networks is the leading innovator and provider of security for virtual data centers and clouds. The company developed the world’s first firewall purpose-built for virtual networks. Now in its fourth release, Altor’s hypervisor-based software is a comprehensive security package featuring integrated intrusion detection (IDS), VM Introspection, security automation and compliance assessment. Recently named the RSA’s Conference Innovator of the Year and a Gartner Cool Vendor, Altor’s virtualization security solutions are currently protecting some of the world’s most demanding virtual environments including those of media giant Nielsen Corporation and the US Army’s Human Resource Command. Founded in 2007 by security and networking experts from Check Point Software, Cisco and Oracle, Altor Networks is headquartered in Redwood Shores, California. For more information, please visit us at www.altornetworks.com.