Q&A with Jonathan Gohstand of PacketMotion - Page 2

VSM: Hasn’t this issue been addressed with current solutions?

JG: Unfortunately not. Many solutions haven’t been virtualized at all, or the virtual version is only a subset of the functionality of the physical incarnation. Also, some solutions require the use of APIs directly to the hypervisor, or the installation of third party code within the hypervisor. This is a problem because infrastructure teams are leery of these solutions, because of the risk to the virtual platform from poorly written or tested third party software, and therefore they do not get implemented. Another concern is that often current solutions consume too many resources (CPU, memory, I/O) on the virtual host, making them impractical to deploy.

VSM: What are some of the benefits an organization should expect to experience with your solution? Why is this important?

JG: There are a number of important benefits organizations can expect from the new Virtual Probe. A single Virtual Probe offers a wide variety of controls in a virtual environment: database monitoring, fileshare monitoring, web/email/file transfer monitoring, virtual firewalling, and flow-level monitoring. A single virtual machine is much easier to support on the virtual servers versus “point” virtual machines for each type of control required.

Also, the typical resource consumption of the new Virtual Probe is less than 4 percent CPU and no more than 3GB of memory under heavy load. Low memory and CPU requirements on the virtual servers make it realistic to deploy this new virtual solution ubiquitously across virtualized hosts in the server farm for complete coverage.

Finally, PacketMotion’s seamless combination of virtual and physical appliances delivers a single solution for audit and security in traditional, virtual private data centers, and cloud data centers. This is a key requirement these days, because the typical organization has critical server assets spread between all three platforms, and needs a consistent audit and control strategy across all three to drive operational efficiency.

VSM: Who is your target market?

JG: Our target market is any organization that has internal data it needs to protect.  Mid-Sized companies and enterprises of all sizes are benefiting from PacketMotion’s solution. However we have deployed in companies with as little as 100 users. Across verticals, popular markets include financial services, healthcare, retail, technology and government.

VSM: The licensing model for virtual security solutions can sometimes be a source of ire or confusion. How does licensing work in your offering?

JG: Licensing for virtual security solutions must take into account one key fact: The Security and Audit teams are almost never in a position to dictate where a particular virtual server is hosted in a virtual data center. The infrastructure team and VMware itself will move virtual servers in response to performance requirements, infrastructure changes or hardware failures. The only way to support this reality is to license security solutions based on the number of monitored virtual servers, independent of location. This is the method we chose with the PacketSentry Virtual Probe.