Intrinsic Security: Take security to the next level

The other guys will have you believe that more is better. You have a problem, just buy a solution and patch the hole. Security operations too siloed? Just cobble together some integrations and hope that everything works together. 

VMware thinks differently. We believe that “integrated” is just another word for “complexity.” And clearly, complexity is the enemy of security. 

Integrated security is bolted–on security. An example would be taking a hardware firewall and making it a blade in a data center switch. That’s what the other guys do. It makes it more convenient to deploy, but it doesn’t actually improve security. 

Security always performs better—and is easier to operate—when it’s designed–in as opposed to bolted–on. At VMware, we call this intrinsic security. When we think about security, being able to build it in means you can leverage the intrinsic attributes of the infrastructure. We are not trying to take existing security solutions and integrate them. We are re-imagining how security could work. 

Enterprises that want to learn how we’ve built security directly into Continue reading

From Micro-segmentation to Internal Firewalling

The Evolution of VMware NSX Service-defined Firewall

Today, many people take micro-segmentation for granted. It’s incredible to recall that just a few years ago, VMware introduced micro-segmentation to support the concept of Zero Trust — a security model that does not automatically trust entities within the security perimeter. Fast forward to the present, and many people have embraced that concept and made it their own. Meanwhile, VMware has extended its solution for micro-segmentation into a full-blown internal firewall. Let’s step back in time and see how VMware progressed from the initial micro-segmentation use case to today’s powerful Service-defined Firewall, deployed by thousands of organizations.

Pioneering the Market for Micro-segmentation

Back in 2013, VMware pioneered micro-segmentation with the release of VMware NSX, the VMware network virtualization and security platform, which propelled VMware into the world of software-defined network and security virtualization. This initial release enabled customers to run a complete Layer 2-Layer 4 stack in software. The guiding philosophy was to make world-class security easy to operationalize.

Some customers used NSX for network segmentation: they created virtual security zones in software where they had previously used hardware. Other customers adopted NSX for micro-segmentation: they were now able to provide Continue reading