On Tuesday, Check Point (NASDAQ: CHKP) announced the new Security Gateway Virtual Edition (VE) with VMsafe integration that secures the cloud with the industry's most advanced firewall and protects dynamic virtual environments from both internal and external security threats. The new Security Gateway VE is based on Check Point's Software Blade Architecture, enabling businesses to leverage the same flexible and comprehensive security solutions available on physical networks -- including Firewall, VPN and intrusion prevention -- to meet the special security, networking and management needs of virtual environments.

The new Security Gateway VE is designed to ensure organizations can secure inter-VM traffic and external networks with granular firewall policies and integrated intrusion prevention capabilities to protect against malicious and unwanted network activity. In addition, organizations can automatically apply security policies to all existing or future virtual machines, without changing the existing network topology or experiencing downtime during live migration.

With Security Gateway VE, customers are able to meet both the traditional network traffic requirements and the dynamic requirements needed to protect data at the hypervisor level, ensuring they have the most comprehensive security for virtual environments.

"Protecting the network from external threats and inspecting traffic in between virtual machines are two primary challenges associated with securing virtual environments," said Dorit Dor, vice president of products at Check Point Software Technologies. "The new Check Point Security Gateway VE inspects inter-VM traffic at the hypervisor level for seamless security across an organization's environment. In addition, administrators have more transparency to prevent threats such as viruses, Trojans and key loggers from ever reaching a virtual machine."

"Security has always been a top concern when it comes to virtual environments," said Predrag Petrovic, senior system administrator, QSS d.o.o., a leading systems integrator. "With Check Point's VE solution we have trusted security protecting traffic on our 29 VMware hosts, enabling us to reap all the benefits virtualization can offer."

With VMware VMsafe™ integration, Check Point's Security Gateway VE can be deployed easily and consistently across the infrastructure to achieve greater visibility, manageability, and enforcement of standard security policies. Now organizations have access to holistic data and greater system protection against new and existing threats in the virtual environment.

"Security remains a top priority for any company looking at deploying virtualization. By partnering with Check Point, customers benefit from a breadth of security solutions for VMware environments," said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances at VMware. "Combining more than a decade of expertise in virtualization and security, VMware and Check Point continue to provide customers the tools they need to secure their virtual environments as they continue toward the goal of delivering IT as a service."

Customers can easily deploy the Security Gateway VE into their existing security infrastructure and virtual environment, dramatically reducing deployment time and costs. Organizations can centrally manage both the physical and virtual gateways from a single console to simplify management. In addition, businesses can provide a clear separation between virtualization and security administrators, while leveraging the same global policies across the organization's different environments. For more information about the Security Gateway VE, visit: http://www.checkpoint.com/products/security-gateway-virtual-edition/index.html.

"With the Security Gateway VE, customers can simplify the complexities of securing dynamic virtual environments, while leveraging the same infrastructure and unified management used to protect their physical networks," concluded Dor.