Infotech Lead America: VMware vSphere 5.1 will support Intel Trusted Execution Technology, providing hardware-backed assurance for integrity of virtualized environments to protect data and reduce threats to cloud data centers.
Dupont, one of the largest global R&D organizations, is using Intel TXT to strengthen security and compliance policies in their private cloud.
Since Dupont’s research and development efforts were spread across the globe, they required an infrastructure that complied with regional regulations and kept sensitive information safe and within geographic borders.
“When extending cloud in a global way, compliance and regulation require capabilities such as geo-fencing, bursting and encryption when migrating to a public cloud, as well as support for vendor cloud services where terms and agreements play a key role,” said Hai Zhu, manager, Dupont Central Research & Development.
With hardware-enhanced security capabilities integrated into the processor, Intel TXT combined with VMware vSphere 5.1 will provide a hardened and high-integrity platform to run business-critical applications in private and public cloud environments.
In cloud datacenters, servers are typically virtualized and shared across multiple departments or customers and are no longer dedicated to specific lines of business. This has created new security concerns.
“Intel TXT provides hardware enforcement to help overcome some of the most challenging aspects of cloud security, including detection and prevention of bios attacks and evolving forms of stealthy malware, such as rootkits,” said Jason Waxman, general manager, Intel Cloud Infrastructure Group.
In a recent global survey of IT professionals conducted by Intel about cloud security, 61 percent of IT pros expressed concern about a lack of control and insight about security capabilities of these shared, virtualized datacenter resources.
IT pros also have concerns about not having adequate tools to protect against cyber-attacks and 57 percent will not put sensitive data that must meet specific compliance requirements into cloud datacenters. Furthermore, 55 percent worry about loss of control of data stored off premise in public cloud provider datacenters.
Intel TXT is a built-in security capability that is part of servers based on Intel Xeon processor E3, E5 and E7 series. When combined with VMware vSphere 5.1, organizations will be able to better address these challenges through increased infrastructure integrity and having greater control over the security status of servers in virtualized clouds.
“The combined capabilities bring a trusted security solution for cloud environments. With VMware vSphere 5.1 and Intel TXT, we are empowering our customers to have the confidence to put their sensitive data and business-critical workloads in the cloud,” said Bogomil Balkansky, senior vice president, Cloud Infrastructure Products, VMware.
