McAfee releases CASB-integrated cloud security platform for container-based applications

McAfee announced McAfee MVISION Cloud for Containers that integrates container security with its Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) security solution. 

Leveraging NanoSec’s zero trust application visibility and control capabilities for container-based deployments in cloud environments, the solution provides customers with the ability to speed up application delivery, while enhancing the governance, compliance and security of their container workloads.

The acquisition of NanoSec will strengthen the container security capabilities of McAfee MVISION Cloud and MVISION Server Protection products, giving its customers the ability to speed up application delivery while enhancing governance, compliance and security of their hybrid, multi-cloud deployments. 

NanoSec’s security capabilities will be applied to applications and workloads deployed in containers and Kubernetes and will be integrated into McAfee MVISION Cloud and MVISION Server Protection offerings. These capabilities include continuous configuration compliance and vulnerability assessment as well as runtime application-level segmentation for detecting and preventing lateral movement of threats.

Container security has long been treated as separate from other Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) security solutions, requiring evaluation, investment and management of multiple, niche products thus increasing total cost of ownership and complexity and reducing security. 

McAfee MVISION Cloud for Containers integrates Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Vulnerability Scanning for container workloads into the existing McAfee MVISION Cloud platform to give customers a unified cloud security solution where consistent security policies can be implemented across all forms of cloud IaaS workloads.

McAfee MVISION Cloud integrates with DevOps tools, helps users “shift-left” to pre-emptively improve compliance and secure container workloads by running security audits in the DevOps pipeline and providing security incident data directly back to the development teams. 

Additionally, McAfee MVISION Cloud also continuously monitors the production deployments of these container workloads to ensure configuration drift does not compromise the security of the applications.

Currently available, McAfee MVISION Cloud for Containers provides CSPM that integrates Configuration Audit checks for containerized workloads to ensure the container platforms run in accordance with CIS and other best practice compliance standards. This is designed to ensure security checks for the complete container stack including the configuration of the virtual machine the container runs on, as well as the storage, network and other Platform as a Service (PaaS) services the container may be accessing.

The offering also adds vulnerability scanning of container images that helps to identify and prevent the use of weak or exploitable components of the container images. This reduces the overall risk profile of the application by minimizing the attack vectors. With Shift Left DevOps integration, users can perform CSPM and Vulnerability Scanning checks earlier in the application development lifecycle. This helps identify risk and provide meaningful feedback to developers within the build process. Additionally, continuously monitor and prevent configuration drift on production deployments of the container workloads.

McAfee MVISION Cloud offers “Shift Left” with security to boost compliance and reduce risk on Microsoft Azure

McAfee announced updates to McAfee MVISION Cloud for Microsoft Azure that will help customers “Shift Left” with security to preemptively help to address compliance and risk within their cloud infrastructure. 

With McAfee MVISION Cloud, security is pushed earlier into the DevOps process so that security professionals can catch risky configurations before they become a threat in production. This gives organizations the ability to deploy applications in the cloud with greater speed and efficiency. 

While Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) environments provide customers with choice and flexibility, if not configured correctly, they also potentially increase the organization’s surface area for security risks. 

McAfee detects compromised account activity in Azure based on brute force login attempts, logins from new and untrusted locations for a specific user, and consecutive login attempts from two locations in a time period that implies impossible travel – even if the two logins occur across multiple cloud services – to support immediate remediation and limit exposure.

McAfee automatically constructs a behavior model with dynamic and continuously updated thresholds for each user and group to identify activity indicative of insider threat. Privileged user analytics identifies risk from inactive administrator accounts, excessive permissions, and unwarranted escalation of privileges and user provisioning.

McAfee MVISION Cloud for Azure enforces DLP policies across data at rest and in motion to ensure compliance with regulations and internal policies. McAfee supports DLP rules based on keywords, data identifiers, user groups, and regular expressions. Enforcement actions include coach users, notify administrator, block, quarantine, and delete. Leverage pre-built industry templates, create custom policies in McAfee, or leverage policies in an existing on-premises DLP solution.

With the new features in McAfee MVISION Cloud for Azure, security groups can integrate policy natively into DevOps processes and toolsets to discover security issues before systems are deployed to accelerate business in the cloud. 

New capabilities include security scans for Azure Resource Manager templates that allow users to discover risky configuration issues or violations in Azure Resource Manager Templates prior to deploying resources. Its inline integration with the tools developers use: security checks inside the DevOps pipeline through API integration with tools including Microsoft Git, Github, and Azure DevOps. Security Feedback is natively integrated into the build process saving time, effort, and frustration.

The offering also offers unified cloud security for Azure ecosystem to allows developers to leverage Azure services knowing security will be built-in by design (IaaS/PaaS/Container services) aligning closely to the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) best practices. Its preemptive risk avoidance improves compliance with regulatory frameworks and reduces the likelihood of data loss, abuse or fines associated with improper security controls by highlighting security findings before they become security incidents.

The new “Shift Left” capabilities in McAfee MVISION Cloud for Microsoft Azure are available now.

Arrow Electronics releases new version of ArrowSphere, its multi-tier cloud platform

Arrow Electronics has enhanced on Monday its multi-tier cloud platform, ArrowSphere with new functionalities that enable channel customers to create tailored multi-vendor solutions for their clients. 

These enhancements improve design, functionalities and user experience, with new additions including extensive catalog of more than 25,000 offers worldwide; AI-enabled search bar for managing subscriptions; visualization displays key offers being purchased by channel customers by region; intelligent catalog filtering by supplier, category, add-on, trial or customer category; and recommendation engine that allows channel customers to view complementary offers for building cloud solutions.

“We already had the customer base and the reach to make a big impact in the public cloud space, but with ArrowSphere in place, we are properly equipped to scale our cloud business to even greater heights,” said Nick Benham, senior partner manager, SCC. “Our customers are getting the customized, self-service experience that they expect, and we are seeing stronger customer loyalty. The deeper intel and insights we receive allow us to plan for the future and budget accordingly.”

“We developed ArrowSphere more than eight years ago with the vision of creating an innovative platform for cloud, where channel customers can easily access our suppliers’ cloud products all in one place and build solutions for their end customers,” said Sean Kerins, global president of Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business.

In June, Arrow added functionalities that enable solution providers and value-added resellers to quote, order, manage, analyze and invoice a wide variety of cloud solutions to ArrowSphere. 

Arrow constantly extends the set of vendors, cloud services and tools available on ArrowSphere, including a deep integration of application programming interfaces. Over 50 leading cloud vendors participate in the cloud platform.

Latest add-ons include a new user interface with the end user portal MyCloudPortal, as well as FinOps and DevOps tools.

The web portal further extends the capabilities of ArrowSphere to end-user customers with a turnkey site, through which customers can seamlessly purchase cloud services, manage their cloud subscriptions and analyze their use of services, setting budgets and thresholds where required. 

MyCloudPortal can be customized by channel customers, with logos, colors and fonts, and they can add their own products and services to the portal as SKUs for their end customers to order as 'as-a-service' utility cloud services.

ArrowSphere comes with a consolidated dashboard to monitor cloud business in real time. Viewing IaaS monthly trends by customers, zooming into subscription level to set alerts and get projected consumption or analyzing the churn on SaaS products, Arrow`s Finops Tools are a smart control panel for sales teams to track customer activity, understanding business trends and take appropriate actions. 

New development operations tools allow users to orchestrate their IaaS and PaaS offering through ArrowSphere. Microsoft ARM and AWS cloud formation templates are available to provision resources. Users are able to choose from existing libraries and customize them or add third-party solutions. 

ArrowSphere offers a flexible set of cloud approaches for the channel and end customers, with different options for quotes and orders, managing cloud services, analytics and billing. A dedicated ArrowSphere team helps customers manage the entire workflow. With an updated, simpler, user-friendly interface, ArrowSphere allows more flexibility to create and customize dashboards that suit different businesses requirements.