Broadcom Inc. today introduced new security, performance and automation capabilities for VMware Cloud Foundation that are intended to help enterprises defend private clouds against artificial intelligence-assisted attacks while reducing operational complexity and infrastructure costs.

The updates affect VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer. They include a guided process for deploying advanced threat prevention, on-premises malware analysis, support for air-gapped environments and application programming interface protection. Broadcom is also adding AI assistants to both products and automating migrations from legacy firewalls.

“As AI-fueled cyberattacks and vulnerability exploits redefine the threat landscape, a fragmented security approach is no longer an option,” said Umesh Mahajan, vice president and general manager of Broadcom’s application networking and security division, in a statement.

The new vDefend 1-2-3 workflow provides a three-stage process for deploying intrusion detection and prevention, network traffic analysis and network detection and response. It first assesses an organization’s threat posture, then applies recommended policies to shared infrastructure such as Active Directory and the Domain Name System before extending them across development, production and demilitarized zones. Broadcom said the workflow can reduce deployment times from months to weeks.

The company is also bringing malware sandboxing on-premises, allowing enterprises to analyze static and dynamic files without sending them to a public cloud. Air-gapped support permits organizations to download threat-intelligence updates separately and manually transfer them into disconnected environments. The capabilities are intended for organizations subject to strict privacy, sovereignty and regulatory requirements. Broadcom said all vDefend functions can now operate on-premises.

Avi Load Balancer gains native API protection for virtual machines, VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service and AI workloads. It combines a web application firewall with API protection to identify exposed interfaces and reduce reliance on separate security products.

Broadcom also reported significant performance improvements, based on internal testing conducted in July. It said Distributed Firewall throughput can reach 22 gigabits per second on servers with 25-gigabit network interface cards and 75 gigabits per second on 100-gigabit systems. At the scale of a VMware Cloud Foundation instance, the company claims throughput of up to 75 terabits per second.

The distributed intrusion detection and prevention system can now deliver as much as 17 gigabits per second per server and 17 terabits per second per VMware Cloud Foundation instance. Avi Load Balancer throughput has increased to as much as 12.25 terabits per second per controller instance. A new two-node Security Services Platform configuration can reduce physical hardware requirements by up to 33%.

AI assistants embedded in vDefend and Avi provide configuration information, troubleshooting help and remediation guidance. The vDefend assistant can also identify duplicate firewall policies and help automate rule cleanup. An updated vDefend and Avi Conversion Tool automates the translation of rules from agent-based firewalls into native vDefend policies.

The capabilities are included in vDefend Security Services Platform 5.2, vDefend 9.1.1, Avi Load Balancer 32.1.4 and vACT 3.0. All are compatible with VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.

Photo Broadcom