When cloud first became a viable computing technology, one of the biggest concerns involved security. The thought was, if you couldn’t touch the box, then how can you guarantee its security? As the years have passed and cloud technology has matured, many contend that data is now more secure in today’s cloud than residing on a legacy platform, thanks to networked methods for intelligent and automated systems.

“The focus of VMware in the security realm has been, ‘We can not only bake security in so you’re not adding boxes, you’re not managing agents,” said Tom Corn (pictured), senior vice president of security products at VMware Inc. “More importantly, we’re in this unique position to understand what things are supposed to be. For example, the AppDefense product that we launched last year.” AppDefense is VMware’s data center endpoint security product.

Today, the virtualization giant is leveraging VMware’s hypervisor’s ability to build and monitor virtual machines to understand the intention of the software applications that are loaded onto it, and then using the hypervisor to say, “That’s all it can do; nothing else,” Corn explained. It flips the system security model, where instead of searching for “bad actors,” the software recognizes and allows in only what “good” is supposed to be there.

Corn spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. The discussed how now is a good time to rethink enterprise security, and why adaptive micro-segmentation is the next development after hypervisor. (* Disclosure below.)

Security that learns to automate itself

There is a huge opportunity for the cybersecurity industry to avoid duplicating past mistakes and start with a clean slate, creating solutions the way it makes sense, according to Corn.

The next logical evolution after tapping hypervisor tech is adaptive micro-segmentation, which VMware has addressed in its vSphere Platinum Edition. The edition layers AppDefense cybersecurity tech with machine learning and behavioral analytics to enable vSphere administrators to deliver secure applications and infrastructure by enabling virtual machines to run in a “known good” state.

It will also offer direct visibility into “VM intent and application behavior” to provide faster and more accurate threat detection and response, according to Corn.

“At the end of the day, we’re really not trying to protect servers or networks; we’re trying to protect data and applications. Being able to … align security to that is a huge opportunity to fundamentally make cloud more secure than a traditional sort of physical environment,” Corn concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld conference.  (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. sponsored coverage of VMworld, and some segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE are sponsored. Sponsors have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE