Intel and McAfee Advancing on Cloud Security

Last week, Intel and McAfee announced that that they will be coming up with a wide, fresh, secure cloud computing initiative geared towards business entities which may have doubts regarding their cloud adoption because of sensitive data and compliance issues. In 2010, Intel acquired McAfee for $7.68B.

According to Jason Waxman, Intel’s Cloud Infrastructure Group general manager, the holistic approach will be able to provide a better cloud security than the traditional enterprise IT security. He also said that “Security is a barrier to cloud adoption” and taking advantage of private clouds is just like providing “another entry point for bad guys to get in”.

The two-pronged approach is aimed to secure the clouds, which combines software and hardware solutions in order to consistently secure cloud, virtual, and physical environments. The initiative is looking into combining McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator and Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology. Part of the offer includes tools like McAfee’s Application Control software and Optimized Virtual Environments AntiVirus. Connection security like McAfee Cloud Security Platform, as well as device security like Cloud Identity Manager, DeepSAFE, and Deep Depender is also offered.  These tools are expected to work in conjunction with hardware security like Intel Cloud SSO and Intel VT.

Actually, most these technologies have already been made available to enterprise clients. However, according to Waxman, Intel and McAfee didn’t promote their collaboration until they already have a comprehensive vision of how to secure the cloud. Greg Brown, chief technology officer of McAfee, said that Intel and McAfee can provide a stronger cloud security. Although the cloud is currently secured by various layers like the external validation solutions and digital certification of real Web servers, there are still a lot that needs to be done in terms of cloud security. The collaboration includes host integrity, asset and location control, and two hardware specific security areas.

The Intel and McAfee collaboration will also provide software based solutions for cloud computing security such as tools for validating and gauging the virtual machines integrity, software security, real time cloud performance, and endpoint awareness. Future cloud security will band together IT administrators, intelligent devices, and application consumers in order to provide a secure cloud computing technology. This move is expected to encourage business entities in adopting cloud computing solutions for their businesses.