CA Technologies Inc. is bolstering its cloud security and compliance portfolio through a partnership with a vendor of policy management technology.
The Islandia, N.Y.-based company’s offerings in the compliance space include CA Automation Suite for Clouds, but collaborating with Mountain View, Calif.-based HyTrust Inc. adds a “complementary element” to the mix, said Nimrod Vax, product manager with CA Technologies.
Rather than building on that capability organically, Vax said “HyTrust brings very fine-grained authorization capabilities at the hypervisor level of the virtual environment.”
Virtual environments, said Vax, “introduces another layer of administration” that makes compliance and identity management a critical need.
Eric Chiu, founder and president of Mountain View, Calif.-based policy management technology vendor HyTrust Inc., said both companies already share joint customers, making the partnership “a natural extension” that will support existing as well as future customers.
Moreover, Chiu said the number of virtual servers in organizations will only continue to expand along with the frequency of security incidents.
“The damage is just greater … you get access to everything, all of the virtual machines, all the network, all the storage … It really puts all the eggs in one basket,” said Chiu.
Dylan Persaud, managing director with Whitby, Ont.-based research firm Eval-Source, said HyTrust’s prior experience with PCI-DSS and compliance monitoring only adds more value to the partnership and the resultant offering.
The partnership basically gives admins visibility into potential problems in their virtualized environments, and provides a way to support end users increasingly bringing personal devices to work, said Persaud.
“Due to where the appliance lies within the infrastructure, the partnership between HyTrust and CA will go far in the enterprise security to satisfy organizations towards cloud security,” said Persaud.
He added that the partnership shows commitment to customers that CA and HyTrust are “serious” about safeguarding data in the cloud.
Michelle Warren, president and founder of Toronto-based MW Research & Consulting, said, with both companies working in tandem, customers now have an option that is conveniently multi-vendor.
“HyTrust and CA working together enables them to deliver a comprehensive solution to address multiple IT needs, while ensuring that the technologies work together,” said Warren.
And, while IT departments are increasingly moving apps to the cloud, Warren said it’s not a widespread trend due to the “complexity of managing, including securing and accessing, the applications and devices.”
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