Kaspersky Expands Virtualization Security On VMware

Kaspersky Lab has partnered with VMware in launching the security vendor's first agent-less anti-virus product for virtualized environments.

Kaspersky Security for Virtualization has been available since last year as agent-based software that requires embedding code in applications running on virtual machines in order to monitor for virus infections. Such an architecture can consume too many resources in computers running multiple business applications.

Kaspersky offers agent-based security for all the major VM vendors: VMware, Citrix Systems and Microsoft. The decision to launch an agent-less alternative with VMware first was due to its customers asking for a less resource-intensive product, Mark Bermingham, a product marketing manager for Kaspersky, said Monday. Kaspersky is in discussions with the other major VM vendors.

With 25,000 channel partners, VMware provides Kaspersky with a sizable potential customer pool and a significant number of those companies use products from both vendors. "We're in the process of exploring some of those synergies," Bermingham says.

Kaspersky's technology has been integrated with VMware vShield Endpoint Security through the latter's EPSec application programming interface. Through that API, Kaspersky's software can provide anti-virus protection from the same virtual appliance running the VMware product.