Dome9 Security announces multi-cloud security management platform

Dome9 Security™, the leading provider of cloud security management for public and private clouds, as well as for dedicated and virtual private servers (VPS), today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 announced the general availability of its new first-of-its-kind, multi-platform security management service that automates cloud server security for both enterprises and cloud hosting providers.

Previously available under beta, Dome9's new commercially available service introduces two new service plans and many new capabilities to deliver simple and scalable security management for private and public clouds across all server operating systems and service providers.  Dome9 uniquely automates and centralizes cloud server security across hosting and cloud providers – leveraging the security built into every cloud server operating system or virtualization technology – with dynamic policy controls to automate security.  Dome9 is unveiling its SaaS offering and publicly demonstrating it for the first time this week at TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 in San Francisco at its exhibit in the Israeli Pavilion.

Dome9 Security also today announced its formal partnership with GoGrid.  For more information, see http://www.dome9.com/press-center/GOGRID-AND-DOME9-SECURITY-PARTNER-FOR-CLOUD SECURITY-MANAGEMENT .

"Whether virtualizing their data centers or moving to private and public cloud computing architectures, enterprises should look to automate and reduce the complexity of their security infrastructure, either from solutions they deploy or require to be provided by their cloud services providers," said Neil MacDonald, VP and Gartner Fellow.  "Next-generation security solutions need to be elastic and scalable, just like the cloud, and able to deploy consistent policies across physical and virtualized servers, as well across on-premises based workloads and the public cloud."

Today's cloud security is ill-equipped to efficiently scale and provide coverage for elastic cloud servers.  Traditional, on-premise security fails to cover the cloud, forcing administrators to keep access open on their cloud servers so they can connect to and manage their machines.  Security provided by cloud providers is often limited, complex and manually operated, and isolated to each provider's cloud.  The result is that most of today's cloud servers are left vulnerable to attack because their security has been too costly and cumbersome to manage.

"Security in the cloud must be as elastic as the infrastructure it protects," said Zohar Alon, Dome9 co-founder and CEO.  "Without efficient and effective management, security controls are often misapplied, leading to vulnerable infrastructure.  Dome9 is providing the first-ever multi-cloud security management platform that centralizes and automates cloud server security on a higher plane than the infrastructure."

Unlike dedicated software or hardware-based firewalls and security tools that can cost thousands of dollars every month and require tremendous resource to manage, the new Dome9 service leverages security already built into every hosted and cloud server, costs just $20 per server per month, is deployed in less than a minute, and offers unprecedented ease of use.  Dome9 provides one-click, secure-access to customers' cloud servers through its key innovation, an industry first, called Secure Access Lease™ technology.

Secure Access Leases provide dynamically generated, time-based secure access to cloud servers that automates security policy to make servers virtually invisible to hackers.  With Secure Access Leasing, all administrative access on a cloud server is closed by default, and opened only when, for whom, and for as long as it is needed.  Dome9's Secure Access Lease technology automatically enables and disables cloud server access for a specific user and time period.  This automation eliminates the manual overhead of managing access, and closes the security gap that results from administrators forgetting to log back in and disable access.

"We have hundreds of servers, and 70 percent are virtualized in our private internal cloud," said Larry Whiteside, CISO of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.  "With Dome9, I can now have a singular management console that gives us the cloud security capability that we need.  Time-based access versus me having to leave access open all the time is a good example.  If access is open for just a small window, I reduce my risk.  Dome9 will give us consolidated management of our infrastructure, no matter what server environment we are in, which is very attractive."

Because Dome9 is multi-platform, it centralizes security management across multiple cloud service providers (e.g., AWS EC2, RackSpace, Terremark, GoGrid, etc.) enabling customers to apply a consistent security architecture to multiple clouds.  In addition, Dome9's security policy is portable, so as cloud servers are migrated or replicated within or across service providers, security is persistent.

"Security of cloud servers is a top priority at GoGrid, and Dome9's Partner Server Image offers a unique approach in automating and controlling secure access to the GoGrid cloud," said Jeffrey Samuels, GoGrid Chief Marketing Officer.  "We work with many partners to enhance our customers' experiences, and Dome9 is an exciting new service that we're pleased to announce."

In addition to unveiling commercially available packages, Dome9 is also premiering several new capabilities, including:

• Multi-tier Administration – Dome9 now offers several tiers of administration with configurable levels of control for delegated administrators. With multi-tier administration, super-users can have full control over all cloud servers, while delegated administrators may be granted partial or limited access to a predefined set of machines.
• Expanded Windows and Linux Support – The Dome9 agent now supports CentOS 6.0 and Ubuntu, covering all major versions of Linux and Windows operating systems, including CentOS/RHEL 5.x and 6.0, Debian 6, and Windows 2008 R2, 2008, 2003 R2 and 2003.
• Account Activity Auditing – Dome9 auditing provides full, account-level visibility and logging of user activity.  Advanced filters let administrators drill down to see when users have logged on to Dome9 Central, changed security policies, sent secure access invitations, and accessed cloud machines.
• Cloud-Friendly Billing – Customers using Dome9 commercially can now enjoy metered, pay-as-you-go billing, so they pay only for what they use.  This lets customers pay for the protection they use with a security and billing model that is as elastic as their cloud infrastructure.

"Every cloud server comes with a built-in firewall, and Dome9 turns these firewalls into your front line of defense," said Alon.  "In addition to making our service available on our website, we're partnering with hosting and cloud providers to deliver Dome9 as a value-added security option to their hosting services that users need and require, increasing ARPU and lowering support costs, while at the same time increasing the overall security of their service provider network itself."

The heart of the system, Dome9 Central, orchestrates access to the cloud infrastructure, allowing full control and protection of the environment.  Dome9's simple-to-use interface with built-in best-practices enforcement ensures users build the right security policy for their servers.  Using Dome9 Central's secure web service, cloud access can be granted from anywhere and changes are deployed instantly.  The lightweight, yet powerful, Dome9 Agent works for virtual machines in private or public clouds, and for dedicated servers, supporting Linux and Windows servers running all virtualization technologies (including VMware, Citrix Xen, KVM, Parallels and Microsoft's Hyper-V).  Dome9 Connect, its API-based integration module for cloud providers, can be used to manage Amazon's Web Services EC2 & VPC Security Groups, without deploying complex daemons, but by using their API keys.