Altor Networks announced that its products are designed for interoperability with the new Cisco Nexus 1000V that Cisco and VMware announced would be available in the first half of 2009. By virtue of this interoperability, Altor Networks' customers will be able to incorporate data provided by the new switch as they evaluate the security posture of their virtual networks.

With Altor Networks' solutions, IT professionals receive the products they need to secure their virtual networks, including real-time policy enforcement, visibility, troubleshooting and analysis of virtual network activity. Physical network security and monitoring solutions only detect activity on physical networks, making them "blind" to inter-VM traffic. With today's announcement, Altor Networks' products can now extend their capabilities to virtual networks that include the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual software switch, protecting inter-VM communication in those environments. Moreover, Altor's solutions leverage the enhanced capabilities of Cisco's Nexus(R) 1000V, such as automatically managing ACLs on the new virtual switches from within Altor Networks' user interface, enabling administrators to achieve granular control over inter-VM communications without having to laboriously manage and maintain access control lists manually.

"The real value of Altor Networks' products is the security policy management capability not offered by the Cisco switch," said Amir Ben-Efraim, chief executive officer of Altor Networks. "No other security solution provides the level of network insight and control required to protect virtual systems and to assist with compliance initiatives. By being the first vendor to leverage the capabilities of Cisco Nexus 1000V to control inter-VM communications, Altor Networks is once again raising the bar for innovation and depth in protecting the virtual environment."

Access control lists alone are notoriously difficult to manage with any level of granularity, which is why most enterprises choose to deploy firewalls as the principle enforcement points on the network. Altor Networks' solutions automate the creation of access control lists for the Cisco Nexus 1000V to help enforce the firewall security policies that administrators define. Altor Networks is able to incorporate data from the Cisco Nexus 1000V because of the architecture of the company's solutions, making it able to offer a solution to the key challenges of visibility and control in the virtual network.