Why HyTrust?

Administrators of virtual infrastructure have unprecedented power at their fingertips. To ensure trust, that power must be checked and monitored.

Virtualization DeliversVirtual infrastructure provides the foundation for an enormous array of flexible, cost-saving initiatives in the datacenter. With benefits ranging from hardware utilization to disaster recovery to private clouds, it’s no surprise that Gartner Group projects server virtualization to account for a full 50% of workloads in 2012 up from just 12% in 2009.

Virtualization has other profound implications. Increasingly, not just application servers but also databases, network switches and firewalls are being virtualized. More sensitive data and more mission-critical applications are migrating onto the virtual stack. As such, auditors and security professionals are expanding their scrutiny of these environments.

Virtualization Also Changes the GameThe tools and processes utilized in the physical world to secure data and systems are, to a great extent, still highly relevant in the virtual world: Servers must be scanned, applications patched, networks segmented, and so forth. The paradigm shift in the virtual world stems from the existence of the hypervisor.

In the physical world, servers, switches, routers and firewalls are bolted and locked into racks. Administering these systems may require physical access (probably with a keycard) into a physical datacenter (perhaps with mounted video cameras). In the virtual world, these security measure are largely bypassed.

Protecting the Keys to the Kingdom Being granted access to the virtual infrastructure is like having access to every system, application, and security appliance in the datacenter. There is no keycard on the door. There are no locks on the racks. There are no cameras watching.

HyTrust enforces policies on the control plane of VMware-based virtual infrastructure and provides the visibility required for security and compliance. Need to ensure that nobody tries to power off the virtual firewall? Need to ensure that a PCI workload isn’t mistakenly migrated to an insecure network? Is your auditor asking for detailed access records? Need to eliminate shared root accounts? vCenter cannot deliver here. Only HyTrust addresses all these use cases and more.

Learn more about how HyTrust Appliance works.