Rapid7's Nexpose Targets Virtualization Security Market

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

As virtualization becomes standard operating procedure for businesses of many sizes, the security challenges of this data center technology move to the forefront. Tech vendor Rapid7 is targeting what is likely to remain a growing market.

As applications increasingly move to virtualized environments, the need for security solutions that examine virtual applications continues to grow.

Security vendor Rapid7 is aiming to help solve the virtual security challenge with a new version of its Nexpose vulnerability management solution. Nexpose 5 integrates scanning of both physical and virtual environments to help identify and mitigate potential security risks.

“With virtualization the security posture today can change at the click of a button,” Tas Giakouminakis, co-founder and CTO of Rapid7 told InternetNews.com. “So what we’ve built into Nexpose 5 is the concept of continuous discovery.”

With continuous discovery Rapid7 is integrating Nexpose into a VMware vSphere environment with the ability to identify and work with virtual machines (VM). The integration also allows Nexpose to react to VMs as they are turned on or off and as they move across a data center.

Nexpose 5 also pulls out VM attributes from a system to build out what Rapid7 calls Dynamic Sites. Giakouminakis explained that the traditional way Nexpose works is that it groups sites together by host name and IP ranges. With virtualization, Nexpose can now be tied to virtual connections that are dynamic in nature. The Dynamic Sites features can enable an administrator to group VMs by administrator specified attributes.

“So you can have grouped view of the world and scan those assets in a specific way,” Giakouminakis said. “You can scan your Windows VMs with your Windows policies versus say your database systems, which may be scanned in a different way.”

Read the rest about virtualization security at eSecurity Planet.