Category: Bromium

Bromimum Enhances Endpoint Security Solution With Version 3 Of vSentry And LAVA

On December 8, cybersecurity vendor Bromium announced the release of vSentry 3.0 and LAVA to bolster its micro-virtualization based endpoint security solution that aims to isolate security threats before they have the opportunity to proliferate within an IT infrastructure. Version 3.0 of vSentry boasts behavioral executable analytics that proactively identify malicious behavior within executable files. By protecting endpoints against executable files that disguise themselves as legitimate applications, Bromium’s vSentry 3.0 augments its ability to protect enterprises from attacks that originate from the internet, email or productivity and sharing applications. Ken Pfeil, CISO at MFS Investment Management, remarked on the efficacy of Bromium’s isolation-based approach to endpoint security as follows:

Isolating threats with Bromium is so phenomenally effective that it has become foundational to my security architecture. This is the second company where I have invested in Bromium because it deploys at scale rapidly, is transparent to the end user, and prevents endpoint breaches better than any technology I have seen.

Whereas vSentry 3.0 features the ability to protect against attacks that originate from executable files as well as other sources, LAVA, short for Live Attack Visualization and Analysis (LAVA), aims to shut down a virtual machine before a security breach has the opportunity to escalate. LAVA allows Bromium to model and visualize attacks as they unfold toward the end of detecting patterns across various security breaches and ultimately creating a library of the multitude of typologies specific to attacks on IT endpoint security. Bromium’s release of version 3.0 of its endpoint security platform comes in conjunction with news that it has doubled “bookings year over year” and increased its customer count amongst the Fortune 500 by a factor of three. Version 3.0 enhances Bromium’s disruptive micro-virtualization technology that leverages CPU virtualization to isolate threats before that they have the opportunity to proliferate. In combination with its recent partnership with Microsoft that ensures compatibility with the Bromium platform and Windows 10, the release of version 3.0 strongly positions Bromium to increase its market share within the increasingly hot cloud security space.

Bromium Collaborates With Microsoft To Complement Windows 10 Security Functionality

Bromium announced today a collaboration with Microsoft that ensures compatibility with Bromium’s micro-virtualization technology and Windows 10 to deliver a secure endpoint market solution. Bromium complements Windows 10 security by means of its approach to security that leverages micro-virtualization to isolate and quarantine security threats before they have the opportunity to touch the endpoint device. Ian Pratt, CEO and co-founder of Bromium, commented on the partnership with Microsoft as follows:

Our strategic partnership with Microsoft is centered on a common technology heritage and a shared goal of hardening the endpoint to prevent enterprise breaches. This partnership validates micro-virtualization as a foundation for future desktop security and assures Bromium’s security products are compatible and complementary to Microsoft’s efforts to enhance security in Windows. Microsoft and Bromium together make Windows endpoints secure, defeating attacks by design and delivering real-time threat insights. We are proud to be working closely with Microsoft to help end the era of enterprise breaches.

As Pratt notes, Bromium’s collaboration with Microsoft underscores the validity of micro-virtualization as a technology that facilitates endpoint security. In addition, the partnership testifies to the complementary quality of new security functionality specific to Windows 10 such as its use of CPU virtualization to protect the endpoint. From an industry perspective, Bromium’s partnership with Microsoft validates the efficacy of isolation technology as a proven modality for ensuring endpoint security in conjunction with Bromium’s real-time analytics and actionable threat intelligence. Expect Bromium to continue amplifying its momentum in the wake of its partnership with Microsoft, particularly as Windows 10 achieves broader adoption throughout the industry.

Bromium Finalizes $40M In Series C Funding For Hardware-Based IT Security Solution

Cybersecurity vendor Bromium recently announced the finalization of $40M in Series C funding in a round lef by Meritech Capital Partners with additional participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners, Highland Capital Partners and Intel Capital. Bromium delivers a hardware-based solution for protecting IT infrastructures against malware and other security threats by way of its proprietary Bromium Microvisor technology, which spins up micro-virtual machines (micro-VMs) every time an application is used. Bromium’s premise is that by limiting the geography of malware to discrete micro-VMs, they can be more easily controlled and ameliorated. Bromium’s vSentry solution takes advantage of Intel CPU functionality related to virtualization to isolate the hardware required for internet access or downloading files. Meanwhile, LAVA provides customers with visualization capabilities to understand and mitigate threats to cybersecurity. Customers manage the Bromium solution by way of the Bromium Management Server (BMS), which controls both vSentry deployment as well as the aggregation and analysis of LAVA events. The Series C capital raise brings the total capital raised by Bromium to $75.7M, according to TechCrunch. Bromium’s current roster of customers includes NYSE, Blackrock and ADP.

Piston Cloud Computing and Bromium Venture Into Cloud Security Space

Piston Cloud Computing recently completed a $4.5 million funding raise from Hummer Winblad and True Ventures, Divergent Ventures and other angel investors. According to the company’s blog, the company’s offering “extends the OpenStack cloud solution to address the security, performance, and lifecycle management problems in today’s hybrid cloud approaches, and specializes on the federation of large, complex datasets that have regulatory requirements for authentication and access control.” Right off the bat, Piston positions itself in the red hot cloud computing security space with reference to its ability to manage large-scale datasets with complex regulatory requirements regarding privacy and security issues. Piston Cloud Computing was founded in early 2011 by Josh McKenty, lead architect for NASA Nebula’s Cloud Infrastructure, and Chris MacGown, Technical Lead at Slicehost, which was acquired by Rackspace in 2008. Puneet Agrawal of True Ventures commented on True’s support of Piston as follows:

At True, we have been following OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system, very closely over the past year. What became clear quickly was that OpenStack was real and gaining momentum with developers in addition to large enterprises. The project now includes over 80 participating companies, including Dell, Cisco, Citrix, and Rackspace, among others…So when we had the opportunity to fund the lead architect behind its development, we jumped at the chance.

Agrawal’s remarks speak volumes about the respect had by OpenStack in investor circles. Piston represents just one of the recent commercializations of OpenStack, following closely open the heels of Citrix’s Project Olympus. The industry should expect more commercializations of OpenStack as companies lower the cost of development by incorporating OpenStack into the core of their cloud offering. Conversely, investors will watch the fortunes of projects such as Piston and Project Olympus closely in order to gauge the rigor of OpenStack’s process for incorporating code from contributors all over the world. Despite the fierce need for security products for the cloud infrastructure space, Piston faces stiff competition from a constellation of other companies gravitating to the cloud security space. For example, Bromium, a San Francisco based start-up that recently raised $9.2 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, emerged from stealth mode in June and announced its operation at the intersection of “virtualization and security.” Peter Levine, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, noted that “Bromium turns today’s security model on its head and exploits virtualization and the latest hardware features to shift the balance of power in favor of the good guys.”