vDefend Release Announcement
by Prashant Gandhi March 26, 2025
New enhancements include: Micro-segmentation Assessment, Air-gapped NDR, and Scale-out Data Lake Platform (Security Services Platform 5.0)
For decades, enterprises have relied on perimeter defenses to protect their private cloud assets from external threats. Yet, in this era of ransomware, protecting only the perimeter has proven to be insufficient. Traditionally, only a handful of “crown jewel” applications were protected inside the private cloud. East-west traffic being ~4X more than north-south traffic, extending perimeter defenses internally proved neither scalable nor economically feasible. As a result, large portions of the private cloud remained vulnerable, enabling attackers to breach weakly protected non-critical workloads and laterally move to compromise high-value assets – crown jewels – ultimately causing significant damage.
VMware vDefend is a software-defined, hypervisor-integrated security solution architected to comprehensively protect every VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud workload – including both critical and non-critical workloads. We are excited to announce new vDefend capabilities that:
- Expand the enterprise’s micro-segmentation scope with planning and assessment,
- Seamlessly scale lateral security across application environments,
- Simplify lifecycle management and operations, and
- Deploy threat detection in regulated environments with air-gapped NDR
These capabilities are designed to accelerate the implementation of zero-trust lateral security in the VCF private cloud. They are especially critical in brownfield environments, which are poorly segmented, and application communication patterns are primarily unknown. Additionally, SE Labs (a leading cyber security test lab) has provided independent validation of vDefend’s real-world effectiveness.
Here are the key highlights:
Kickstarting Micro-segmentation Assessment and Planning
- Security Segmentation Report – Part of our Security Intelligence tool for lateral security visibility and threat analytics, the security segmentation report provides security teams and compliance officers with a clear assessment of the current segmentation health (via segmentation score), identifies gaps and offers actionable next steps to improve the segmentation posture. This is the magic bullet that enables enterprises to rapidly and comprehensively roll out zero-trust lateral security to combat ransomware.
- Lateral Security for VCF validated solutions guide – A must-have, verified technical reference for quickly deploying VMware vDefend Zero Trust lateral security in VCF private clouds.
Streamlining Security Operations
- Security Services Platform – A self-contained, simplified platform that hosts Security Intelligence and advanced threat prevention features. It also provides a scale-out architecture to address the growing analytics and security demands of large VCF deployments.
- Micro-segmentation-as-Code – Automates policy deployment with the applications, accelerating secure application rollouts.
- Network Detection and Response (NDR) for Air-Gapped Environments – Enables real-time threat detection and response in classified or high-security deployments without requiring external connectivity.
Third-party Validation
- SE Labs Test Validation Report for VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) – Awarded a highly coveted AAA rating in a rigorous multi-stage attack test against the most sophisticated real-world threats.
Business Value – Analyst Insights from Customer Interviews
- Forrester Total Economic Impact (TEI) – Found that customers using VMware vDefend reduced cyber breach risk by 40%, improved security operations team productivity by 25%, avoided 10% cyber insurance premium increases, and realized 116% ROI.
Read the full blog for all the details.