SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. & MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -  Catbird, the pioneer in leading-edge security and compliance solutions for virtual, cloud and physical networks, and HyTrust, Inc., the leader in policy management and access control for virtual infrastructure, today announced integration of the HyTrust® Appliance with Catbird’s vSecurity®. HyTrust provides control and compliance for host machines by analyzing, authorizing and creating an audit trail for all virtualization administration operations and enforcing correct host configuration; while Catbird proactively secures the virtual network and guest operating systems by analyzing and responding to network events and attack, and enforcing correct VM configuration. Together, the integrated solution delivers end-to-end security protection and control for all aspects of the virtualized data center—especially critical for organizations in the public sector and regulated commercial industries.“As a key VMware partner in the federal space, we see government agencies eager to embrace virtualization and enable cloud computing,” said Craig P. Abod, president of Carahsoft, a government-focused information technology solutions provider with customers such as the U.S. Army, Air Force, State of Virginia, Veterans Administration (VA), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). “With integrated solutions from Catbird and HyTrust, customers can confidently virtualize more of their infrastructure.” 

The combined solution provides centralized access control; network monitoring; granular object-based policy management; hypervisor security configuration; zones of trust and firewalling; IPS/IDS and log aggregation in a comprehensive package that enables total visibility and control for virtual machines and hypervisors. In addition, the Catbird Control Center will integrate monitoring and reporting from the HyTrust appliance, ensuring appropriate security protection and compliance metrics are satisfied to protect the hypervisor and virtual network. 

“This partnership is the only solution that meets the tough compliance requirements of PCI, HIPAA, GLBA and others,” observed Edmundo Costa, Catbird CEO. “For example, many of our government customers are regulated by FISMA, which requires 11 specific access controls that are each degraded by the introduction of a virtualized data center. Deployed according to best practices, the solution enables customers to meet the C&A requirements of a FISMA Medium or FISMA High environment.” 

Award-winning products from HyTrust and Catbird enable customers and partners to orchestrate information technology solutions without compromising security. Defense-in-depth features provided by the solution include: 

• Complete visibility and rapid analysis of all virtual machines, virtual and hypervisor-connected physical networks and hypervisor configuration;
• Proactive monitoring of established regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, FISMA, GLBA and SOX to enable real-time compliance policy enforcement;
• Automated remediation measures ranging from updating the hypervisor configuration to quarantining questionable virtual machines to ensure a robust and audit-ready security and compliance posture at all times; and
• Prevention of unauthorized access and activity.

“Security, compliance and detailed audit trails are major requirements for any government virtualization program,” said Dan Ackerman, executive vice president and partner at Guident, a leading integrator of business intelligence, management consulting, and systems engineering services to the government and commercial marketplaces. “Guident leverages products from credible partners such as Catbird and HyTrust when architecting government virtualization implementations, enabling a level of security and compliance that is as good or better than a physical environment.” 

Incorporating HyTrust data into Catbird’s framework provides broad IT documentation and reporting features on the compliance posture of the virtualized data center. Accessible from a single dashboard interface, the aggregated information provides access to more controls than any other solution on the market. This seamless visibility simplifies auditing and reporting processes for regulators and security directors charged with monitoring compliance changes in the migration from physical to virtualized networks. 

“The results of this integration are truly greater than the sum of its parts,” said Eric Chiu, CEO of HyTrust. “With the federal government push to accelerate adoption of cloud computing and recent focus on establishing national standards in the area of security and operations, the combined solution will become a major enablement for government adoption of this emerging technology and for taking costs out of the IT infrastructure. What’s more, virtualized and cloud environments in regulated commercial businesses are being increasingly scrutinized by auditors. The combined solution from Catbird and HyTrust will make passing that audit a whole lot easier.” 

Pricing & Availability 

A starter kit that includes protection for 10 VMware hosts (20 sockets) is available now for US$25,000 through resellers. This represents a significant savings from list pricing. 

About Catbird 

Catbird is the industry leader in comprehensive security and compliance for virtualized, cloud and physical environments, and a winner of three Best of Show Finalist Awards at VMworld 2009 and 2008; the Windows IT Pro Best of Tech·Ed 2008 IT Pro Editors Choice Award for Security; and winner of the 2007 VARBusiness Technology Innovator Award for Virtualization. Via Catbird vSecurity and the “Catbird” virtual appliance, Catbird is the only company delivering best-practice security for Hypervisor, Guest VMs and Policy/Regulatory Security Compliance. As companies migrate mainstream servers and desktops to virtual environments, uncertainty over security and compliance can impact deployment plans. Catbird’s protection eliminates these worries and keeps virtualization plans on track. Founded in 2000 by Internet pioneer Ron Lachman, the company’s innovative technology protects tens of thousands of customer systems and networks who rely on Catbird and its partners to protect their valuable IT assets from external and internal threats. The private company is based in Silicon Valley, and is currently recruiting new partners and resellers. 

About HyTrust

HyTrust^®, headquartered in Mountain View, CA, is the leader in policy management and access control for virtual infrastructure. HyTrust empowers organizations to virtualize more—including servers that may be subject to compliance—by delivering enterprise-class controls for access, accountability, and visibility to their existing virtualization infrastructure.