The topic of security for virtualization and cloud is an important one for many of you. With virtualization and cloud technologies, the data center environment has evolved from rigid, fixed environments where applications run on dedicated servers towards dynamic, automated, orchestrated environments where pools of computing resources are available to support any application to be accessed anywhere, anytime, from any device.
Security is the biggest hurdle to support this new architecture. How long does it take your security administrators today to implement appropriate policy changes on firewalls in the network? How can you ensure security is not slowing down this dynamic environment, yet at the same time, continues to deliver key functionality – safe application enablement, protection against modern threats with predictable performance, and flexible network integration?
In a series of articles on Security Week, I provide context around the requirements that you should thinking about in the virtualized data center. In Part 1, I wrote about how important is it to ensure security solutions are integrated with orchestration systems so that security does not slow down the dynamic nature of virtualization and cloud environments. In Part 2, I continue the discussion on security requirements beyond automation and orchestration - which requirements stay the same and which changes as you move towards virtualization and cloud.
All of these discussions will culminate at Ignite, where we will feature several sessions on our approach to security in the virtualized data center.