Kaspersky Lab today announced that Kaspersky Security for Virtualization is now certified as a VCE Validation Ready, PCI compliant solution through the VCE Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. The TAP program is designed for independent software vendors, hardware manufacturers, virtual appliance vendors and other technology providers looking to simplify and accelerate their solutions for deployment with VCE Vblock Systems.

Kaspersky Security for Virtualization is a flexible solution, providing agentless or light agent options, or a combination of both, to meet an organization's unique security objectives. The solution delivers both protection and performance for virtualized environments. Kaspersky Security for Virtualization includes advanced cloud-assisted antivirus protection for instant messaging, mail and web, application, device and web controls, firewall, HIPS, vulnerability monitoring, plus advanced heuristics. The result is powerful, multi-layered security combined with efficient performance for all major virtual environments, including VMware. The solution seamlessly integrates with VCE Vblock Systems by allowing the whole platform, including virtual machines, to control security tasks and policies from a centralized management tool. Kaspersky Security for Virtualization can also protect bare metal operating systems in combination with Kaspersky Endpoint Security, giving a complete solution managed from a single point of control.

VCE Vblock Systems provide rapid deployments and dramatically lower IT costs by offering pre-integrated, pre-tested and pre-validated converged infrastructure solutions that combine best-in-class compute, network, storage, data protection and virtualization technologies from Cisco, EMC and VMware, delivered by VCE as a single product with unified support across all components. A VCE TAP member since 2012, Kaspersky Security for Virtualization received its first VCE certification, the Vblock Ready Certification, in early 2013. 

"We are quite pleased that Kaspersky Security for Virtualization is now certified as a VCE Validation Ready, PCI compliant solution through the VCE Technology Alliance Partner Program," said Mark Bermingham, virtualization evangelist at Kaspersky Lab. "This partnership provides businesses with a complete solution managed from a single point of control, allowing customers to deploy Vblocks with virtualized workloads to manage policies and compliance with a centralized tool. Kaspersky Security for Virtualization ensures security and that organizations can maintain high virtualization density and high performance levels in VCE deployments."

The VCE Validation Ready program provides a remote Vblock Systems-based test bed that VCE partners and customers can use to run their own test plan and hardware/software configurations. It allows for the pre-testing, pre-validation, or certification of solutions, reference architectures, and configurations that go beyond standard Vblock Systems. It can be used to certify compliance with industry standards such as PCI and HIPAA, other Proof of Concept (POC) exercises or performance and scalability tests.

"VCE is pleased to expand its Technology Alliance Partnership with Kaspersky Lab and to provide them with the VCE Validation Ready certification," said DJ Long, senior director, Technology Alliances, VCE. "As a VCE TAP partner, Kaspersky Lab has demonstrated that it can integrate its products with Vblock Systems, delivering transformative data center solutions for mutual customers that enable the agility, simplicity and economics of converged infrastructure with Kaspersky Lab's expertise in virtualization security."

VCE works with Superna to conduct and administer the VCE Validation Ready and Vblock Ready certifications for VCE TAP program members. By obtaining these certifications, Kaspersky Lab enables mutual channel partners and customers to accelerate the adoption of Vblock Systems while leveraging Kaspersky Security for Virtualization to bring security and compliance technologies to virtual endpoints that were previously difficult to secure or manage without sacrificing network performance.