Today, shortly before the start of the industry’s leading security event
RSA Conference 2008, Co-Founders, Bob Darabant (CEO) and John Peterson (CTO) announced the launch of
Montego Networks™, a new company whose
Montego HyperSwitch™ is an innovative virtual security networking solution that delivers policy
enforcement, access control, and secure switching for virtual networks.
Organizations are increasingly converting their data centers and physical computing platforms to leverage high-density, high efficiency virtualized environments. According to the Yankee Group, more than 95% of businesses plan to install a virtualization solution. Virtualization platforms from vendors such as VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft create software-based simulations of physical network and server infrastructure. By consolidating simulated virtual machine (VM) resources on a high-performance physical host machine, virtualized environments allow organizations to consolidate physical servers, increase CPU utilization and reduce resource consumption. When aggregated, these savings allow organizations to substantially reduce data center operating costs, improve service quality, enhanced reliability, and more.
Unfortunately, virtualization incurs unique network and application security risks which, if left unaddressed leave virtual machines, virtualized applications and critical data exposed to service interruptions, data theft, regulatory compliance violations and other threats.
“The challenges virtualization presents data center staff are analogous to what many network operation teams now face: how to secure a growing, mobile and diverse population of new devices flooding the enterprise. Instead of dealing with new wireless and mobile devices popping on the network, administrators face a virtualized sprawl of new server
IP addresses and machine names appearing and moving around the network--sometimes on a daily basis. This introduces new risks. It is critical for enterprises with plans to spin up large amounts of virtual machines to have a security strategy for virtualization,” said Phil Hochmuth, Senior Analyst, Yankee Group.
Today, an emerging class of network security solutions has attempted to address these vulnerabilities. However, they often offer limited coverage that may create a false sense of security. Alternately, they may consume excessive host machine CPU and memory resources and incur an impractical performance drain on the protected virtual environment.
The Montego HyperSwitch approaches virtualized network security from a new direction that integrates network policy enforcement and access control with a high-availability virtual security switch. This unique approach allows the Montego HyperSwitch to efficiently deliver advanced capabilities including policy-based virtual network partitioning, L2-L4 Firewall, Identity Firewall, Content Firewall, virtual network discovery, secure inter-VM communication, 802.1Q VLANs, 802.1D spanning tree , load-balanced Quality of Service (QoS), Policy Based Switching, Policy Based Traffic Mirroring, and more.
In addition, Montego’s carefully-calibrated HyperVSecurity™ technology enables high performance and exceptionally low host resource consumption. In April 2008, Montego Networks is offering a Starter Edition of the Montego HyperSwitch as a free download, and selling its Enterprise Edition. The introductory price of the HyperSwitch Enterprise Edition is list-priced at $495 USD (per annual software license) in the United States.
Montego’s HyperVSecurity release 1.5 initially supports VMWare, but has been architected to operate within heterogeneous virtualization environments to provide additional support for Citrix, Virtual Iron, and Microsoft virtualization technology in Q3-2008.
Montego is the first virtual security solution to support an interoperable, multi-vendor virtual security framework. The Montego HyperSwitch’s embedded HyperVSecurity technology enables policy-based switching of traffic to third-party virtual security solutions such as those from Blue Lane, Catbird, and StillSecure. This allows 3rd party security applications to achieve VM-to-VM inspection. This also allows users to improve performance of best-of-breed virtualized deep packet inspection, intrusion detection / intrusion prevention (IDS/IPS), patch management and related systems within the virtual environment.
More details, including product specifications are available on the company website at www.montegonetworks.com and a Web-video demonstration of the Montego HyperSwitch is viewable at: http://www.montegonetworks.com/productpreview.html.
“Security for virtual environments is imperative. While some security vendors are now touting security for virtual networks, users often find their solutions are incomplete or impractical,” said Bob Darabant. “The Montego HyperSwitch is a completely new approach that integrates high performance virtual security, high-availability virtual switching and an open, interoperable security framework. This allows users to enjoy complete protection for their virtual networks along with the open flexibility to leverage their choice of multi-vendor security offerings.”
Industry Support for Montego
“While enterprises are eager to realize the benefits of virtualization—network managers still hold valid concerns about the security of these networks. The Montego HyperSwitch is a powerful solution to the virtual security problem that will appeal strongly to our customers who seek a comprehensive offering for improved visibility, policy enforcement and ironclad security for their virtual environments,” said Sean Shea, VP, Emerging Technology Products Division, Expert Server Group – VMware’s premier Server Partner and a leading integrator of virtual networks.