Secure and VMware team up for virtualised firewalls

Secure Computing has announced a partnership with VMware, which will provide customers with secure gateway appliances for businesses.

The appliances will be built for VMware's virtualised environments, and provide users the tools to implement and manage security for multiple virtual machines - or multiple applications within a virtual machine - through a single gateway.

Secure claimed that its customers could capitalise on the business benefits of VMware virtualisation which include reduced operating expenses, business continuity and a greener carbon footprint.

The company also said that it ensured security across the data centre in ways not possible in a physical environment.

"It's not the first time a firewall vendor has had a virtualised firewall solution but it is the first time a firewall vendor is choosing to support an enterprise software virtualisation system that is clearly market leading," said Mike Smart, senior product marketing manager for EMEA at Secure.

"For us, it's not only about creating more efficiency around multiple devices but its also leveraging existing customer infrastructure," he added.

Smart said that many Secure customers used VMware systems, and that they could take advantage of security solutions across the VMware infrastructure.

Customers have problems securing a virtualised data centre, he explained. For them, having to deploy dedicated firewalls or separate hardware solutions that were not part of their general hardware standards made it difficult, increasing risk and lacking support.

Smart said: "For them going to an existing infrastructure they've chosen like VMware and simply adding security by imbedding it that into the software solution without separate hardware requirements makes a huge difference."