Kaspersky Lab has unveiled a major update to its dedicated security product for data centres, Kaspersky Security for Virtualization Light Agent. In addition to the virtualisation platforms and operating systems already supported, the solution now delivers virtualisation-native security to any server, regardless of the operating system it runs — in both Agentless and Light Agent modes.
Windows-only and Linux-only data centres are rare, with the majority mixing the two operating systems. This poses challenges for managing security across data centre infrastructure. Some of the barriers that businesses face include the costs, time and human resources needed to install, configure and orchestrate different solutions for different platforms and OSes. To help address these challenges, Kaspersky Lab is offering a unified approach to securing virtual environments.
Light Agent now provides virtual machines built on Linux with all the benefits of multilayered security available for Windows, including anti-malware scanning, memory and processes protection, device, web and mail controls with proactive detection, exploit prevention and anti-cryptor technology that protects virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) from ransomware. Unlike traditional agent-based solutions, Kaspersky Security for Virtualization Light Agent is designed to provide a high level of protection while minimising the impact on the systems’ performance. It does this by offloading resource-heavy anti-malware scans from individual VMs to a dedicated Security Virtual Machine.
Linux OS is also supported in the Agentless version of the solution, along with the latest virtualisation platforms, like VMware vSphere 6.5 and VMware NSX 6.2 & 6.3. The list of supported platforms and operating systems now also covers the most recent operating systems by Microsoft — Windows Server 2016, and Windows 10 in VDI, including Windows 10 RedStone1. The solution is compatible with Hyper-V 2016 and reinforces the security capabilities of the latest virtualisation platform from Microsoft.
The new version brings several architecture improvements for better manageability across the entire data centre estate. Kaspersky Security for Virtualization Light Agent can now be deployed simultaneously, onto a number of Microsoft Windows Hyper-V hosts, due to its integration with the System Centre Virtual Machine Manager. The Light Agent UI can now be disabled on any VM in the software-defined data centre— to bring resource-efficiency to virtualised infrastructure running on Windows Server OS (when Remote Desktop or Terminal Services are enabled), application virtualisation based on Citrix XenApp, and Microsoft Windows Terminal Services environments. Light Agent now also allows users to specify exceptions or configure enforced scanning policies using a wider list of software vendors and their applications.
“With this major release of our virtualisation security solution we are addressing the needs of the customers who own heterogeneous data centres with various platforms and operating systems. The virtualisation-aware architecture of the solution provides a comprehensive toolset of protective technologies designed to work in harmony with a customer’s software-defined data centre. From now on, whatever operating system is running – Microsoft Windows or Linux – we can make sure that the data centre receives exactly the security capabilities it needs, to preserve the agility of the entire organisation’s cybersecurity strategy.” said Vitaly Mzokov, Solution Business Lead, Hybrid Cloud & Data Centre Security, Kaspersky Lab.
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