Altor Networks just announced the release of its new virtual firewall, Altor VF 3.0. It is using the Fast-Path approach of the VMsafe APIs that enables the application to process the virtual traffic from inside the ESX vKernel, thus leading to a better performance in critical missions.

The new Altor VF is one of the first software that has VMware VMsafe APIs integrated in fast-path mode. This combination delivers a greater throughput than a firewall that runs in a Virtual Machine and also improves security and reduces the complexity, thus making it easier to use.

“Customers can realize higher virtualization ROI by maximizing the number of secure VMs on each physical host while meeting their security compliance requirements,” stated Amir Ben-Efraim, CEO of Altor Networks. “The Altor VF 3.0 exceeds the most stringent enterprise requirements for defense-in-depth in the virtual and internal cloud environment, without compromising any of the performance, reliability and flexibility benefits offered by virtualization.”

Another advantage that Altor VF 3.0 has is the fact that it offers security at an individual VM level and that leads to a protected CM without the need of security agents on the guest or complicated network reconfigurations.

Altor VF also has a security-signature update service that gives users an up-to-date protection against any threats that might appear. The VMotion feature offers a tight integration with VCenter and also eases administration.

“Hypervisor-level security interfaces are not a panacea, but they do offer the potential for significant gains in defense-in-depth and performance when used to secure the virtual infrastructure,” said Neil MacDonald, VP and Gartner Fellow. “Virtualization creates a new platform to deliver security functionality in a dynamic way, removing many of the physical barriers to adoption of security controls throughout our next-generation data center and private cloud infrastructures – either running in guest VM or in the hypervisor itself.”