VMware, Inc. made two key announcements during Connect 2020, the company's annual cybersecurity user and partner conference (hosted virtually by VMware Carbon Black):
Intent to Acquire Octarine to Bring Intrinsic Security to Containers & Kubernetes
Protecting workloads is critical to the security of applications and data inside every organization. The unique properties of the cloud (speed, agility, scale) mean that developers are increasingly using Kubernetes and containers to modernize applications and changing the nature of workloads that need to be secured.
As with any major technology adoption, attackers are not far behind, looking to take advantage of new risk areas. Building Octarine's innovative Kubernetes security platform into the VMware security portfolio presents a major opportunity for VMware to further mitigate risks in several ways:
Following the acquisition's close, the Octarine technology will be embedded into the VMware Carbon Black Cloud, providing new support of security features for containerized applications running in Kubernetes and enable security capabilities as part of the fabric of the existing IT and DevOps ecosystems. This innovation will further reduce the need for additional sensors in the stack. Octarine capabilities will also integrate and leverage the VMware Tanzu platform, including current investments in Service Mesh and Open Policy Agent.
"Acquiring Octarine will enable us to further expand VMware's intrinsic security strategy to containers and Kubernetes environments by embedding the Octarine technology into the VMware Carbon Black Cloud," said Patrick Morley, general manager and senior vice president, Security Business Unit, VMware. "This, combined with native integrations with Tanzu, vSphere, NSX and VMware Cloud Foundation, will create what we believe is a unique and compelling solution for intrinsically securing workloads. And, with the addition of our AppDefense capabilities merged into the platform, we can fundamentally transform how workloads are better secured."
VMware's intrinsic security strategy is centered on enriching context from across the security portfolio and leveraging the VMware fabric for native telemetry and control at the endpoint, workload, network, user access point, and application. This innovation enables a true XDR solution that works out of the box with existing VMware solutions – reducing all the bolt-on sensors and appliances that plague security.
For more information on Octarine, click here.
VMware Launches Next-Gen SOC Alliance
In an effort to empower modern SOC teams with the capabilities and context they need to greatly improve both their efficiency and efficacy, VMware has launched a Next-Gen SOC Alliance.
The alliance features Splunk, IBM Security, Google Cloud's Chronicle, Exabeam, and Sumo Logic integrations with the VMware Carbon Black Cloud to deliver key XDR capabilities and context into SIEM technologies that power the modern-day SOC. Equally important, the combined solutions will be able to take advantage of VMware's Intrinsic Security framework and enable SOC teams to:
Other key benefits from the Next-Gen SOC Alliance include:
"The Next-Gen SOC Alliance brings a critical mass of XDR context and capabilities to SOCs in a fully intrinsic way – one that can uniquely leverage the VMware fabric," said Tom Barsi, Vice President of Alliances for VMware Carbon Black. "In partnership with the industry's leading SIEM/SOAR players, we're setting a strong vision for the modern SOC and delivering unprecedented visibility and remediation capabilities across endpoints, networks, workloads, and containers."
"Splunk's Security Operations Suite acts as the backbone for some of the most advanced SOCs in the world," said Haiyan Song, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Security Markets, Splunk. "As the security industry continues to embrace data at the center of their security strategy, it's more important than ever to combine the power of Splunk's industry-leading SIEM and SOAR solutions with XDR to fight back against increasingly sophisticated cyber actors. We are pleased to bring Splunk Enterprise Security and Splunk Phantom to this alliance with VMware Carbon Black and look forward to helping our mutual customers around the world solve their toughest security challenges with data."