Sourcefire today rolled out its first two IPS appliances for virtualized environments, as well as a new version of its 3D System intrusion prevention platform.

The new VMware-based virtual appliances, Virtual 3D Sensor and Virtual Defense Center, can be monitored by physical or virtual management consoles and work with ESX and ESXi platforms. The Virtual 3D Sensor supports 5- to 500-Mbps speed.

"The only other vendor with a virtual sensor is IBM, and theirs is a one-size-fits-all sensor," says Steve Piper, senior direct of products for Sourcefire. "The way we like to say it is that you're either securing virtualization or virtualizing security. In the first, you're protecting VMware. And in the second, you're leveraging the cost savings that virtualization brings to deploying IDS/IPS to the far corners of your network or to your remote offices."

The virtual appliances can sit between virtual machines, between physical hosts and virtual machines, or between physical machines, he says.

Sourcefire's new 3D System 4.9 release, meanwhile, adds more than 24 IPS enhancements, including better network visibility, new dashboard customization, and policy-layering, where users can create and modify policies by geography, site, department, and user. It also comes with application detection capabilities for Oracle, Firefox, Gnutella, and Timbuktu, as well as other apps.

"Our new custom analysis widget can customize [the dashboard] based on what you want to see," Piper says. "What's unique about these custom analysis widgets is you can also view events over time."

Sourcefire's 3D System 4.9, Virtual 3D Sensor, and Virtual Defense Center are all available now.

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