Startup of the Week: Altor Networks
The startup will soon offer a virtual firewall to complement its virtual network analyzer
by Andrew Conry-Murray, June 21
Virtualized servers can be black boxes: Information goes in and comes out, but IT often doesn’t have a good handle on what’s actually happening inside. Altor Networks offers monitoring and firewall software to audit inter-VM traffic, enforce security policies, and shine a light into the virtualized darkness.
THE BIG IDEA
Multiple virtual machines on a single server can communicate with each other with little IT oversight. This communication can violate compliance regulations or let malware spread from one VM to another. Altor Networks’ Virtual Network Security Analyzer (VNSA) monitors traffic among virtual machines and provides critical visibility into inter-VM communication.
CONTROL KNOBS
VNSA is deployed as a virtual appliance, with one agent per physical server. It monitors VMs connected through VMware’s Virtual Switch. Multiple agents report to a single console. The agents report on inter-VM communications, including ports and protocols used. The company plans to enable VNSA to send SNMP traps to third-party management tools. This summer, the Virtual Network Firewall will launch. It will control inter-VM communication and restrict VMs to authorized ports and protocols…
(full article)