Lately, I’ve been requested a number of occasions about what extra income alternatives could be unlocked with VMware vDefend, past its well-known and effectively adopted core Distributed Firewall (micro-segmentation) capabilities. This impressed me to put in writing this weblog — to discover the superior options and value-added providers that vDefend gives, and the way these could be leveraged by Cloud Service Suppliers (CSPs) to increase their cloud safety portfolio and drive new monetization fashions.
VMware vDefend Core base Functionality
- The basic providing is the Distributed Firewall (DFW) (generally additionally “Gateway Firewall”) — i.e. east–west plus north–south firewalling at a software program/hypervisor layer.
- It helps Layer 2-7 stateful firewalling, identity- and application-aware insurance policies, dynamic grouping of workloads, and so on.
- It’s tightly built-in with VMware Cloud Basis (VCF).
New Income Streams with VMware vDefend Superior Capabilities:
These are the extra options/capabilities past primary micro-segmentation that you must take a look at so as to add to the safety providers providing portfolio:
- Gateway Firewall
- Along with DFW, there’s a “gateway” part for perimeter or segmented zone management (L2/3/4 firewalling at edge factors) as a part of vDefend
- Helpful for CSPs once you’re providing tenant isolation, controlling ingress/egress visitors, and so on.
- Superior Risk Prevention (ATP) / IDS/IPS / NDR / Sandbox / Site visitors Evaluation
- The “vDefend Firewall’s Superior Risk Prevention” tier provides: IDS/IPS, community visitors evaluation (NTA), sandboxing, community detection & response (NDR) capabilities.
- This can be a key worth add for CSPs – you’ll be able to supply extra than simply segmentation, you’re providing menace detection, prevention and response.
- Safety Intelligence / Segmentation Evaluation / Analytics
- Options just like the “Safety Segmentation Report” that analyze flows to determine segmentation gaps, generate a segmentation rating, present rule suggestions.
- The “Safety Companies Platform (SSP)” – scale-out structure for safety intelligence and visibility throughout massive environments.
- That is notably helpful for CSPs since you’ve multi-tenant, massive scale, presumably complicated workloads and wish to supply visibility dashboards and analytics as a part of the service.
- Container / Multi-workload Assist
- vDefend helps workloads not simply VMs, however containers, naked metallic, and so on.
- For CSPs that is necessary when you’re supporting Kubernetes/containers, hybrid or multi-cloud workloads for patrons.
- Multi-tenant / Delegated Administration Capabilities
- Current enhancements permit for “VPC-Conscious Lateral Safety” — skill to use per-tenant or per-VPC insurance policies, with delegated administration for tenants/app homeowners.
- Self-Service Micro-segmentation: app homeowners can outline fine-grained insurance policies inside zones outlined by infra.
- For a CSP that is very important: you wish to supply tenants self-service whereas sustaining central management/oversight.
- Geo-IP / Edge Controls
- Instance: Geo-IP filtering on the gateway firewall (permit/block by nation) for visitors flows
- Helpful for compliance/regulatory or world CSP situations.
- Air-gapped / remoted surroundings help
- The NDR functionality now helps environments that don’t connect with public web for menace intelligence updates (necessary for regulated/non-public CSPs).
What this implies for a CSP Choices
If you’re a CSP & evaluating functionality and contemplating vDefend as a part of your safety stack/service providing, you must take into consideration:
- Which tier you wish to supply primary segmentation (DFW) vs full menace prevention (ATP/IDS/IPS/NDR).
- Tenant / multi-tenant wants: Do you want per-tenant segmentation, delegated admin, self-service, and so on. vDefend helps that.
- Scale & visibility: The analytics & intelligence modules are key for big scale operations.
- Workload varieties: VMs, containers, naked metallic — when you help them, you’ll want the broader options.
- Compliance/regulatory: Insurance policies like geo-IP, offline menace intelligence updates, absolutely remoted operations.
- Automation/DevOps integration: Micro-segmentation as code, API-driven coverage creation, combine into CI/CD and so on.
- Gateway/Edge controls: For those who’re providing ingress/egress firewall or edge segmentation for patrons, be certain that the gateway firewall functionality is included.
Key Licensing Concerns
- VMware vDefend single SKU, is offered as an add-on to VMware Cloud Basis (VCF) & contains all options.
Abstract
To maximise income, a CSP ought to give attention to packaging these superior capabilities into differentiated service bundles & give attention to promoting enterprise outcomes in relation to safety of the surroundings with extra intgrated cloud working mannequin, past IaaS into managed safety providers.