Amazon announced several initiatives at its AWS re:Invent conference that are destined to disrupt several markets
Held last week in Las Vegas, the Amazon Web Services’ conference hosted more than 10,000 attendees.
One such program is Amazon WorkSpaces, an Amazon provided virtual desktop (VDI) product, which will be available for a low monthly fee, starting, according to Amazon, at $35.
Another initiative is AWS AppStream that provides infrastructure to assist cloud gaming developers to quickly launch and scale applications that rely on AWS’ compute infrastructure for rendering.
CloudTrail is an AWS logging service that can be selected from the AWS dashboard to funnel event notifications into a storage bucket on S3, Amazon’s storage service.
There were 19 security vendors, out of 188 at the conference, on display in the AWS re:Invent expo area. Most prominent was Trend Micro whose recent growth can be attributed to its early adoption of the cloud for encryption and protection with its Deep Security as a Service that Trend Micro says quickly and inexpensively provides firewall, IPS, malware protection, and file integrity monitoring for any virtual instance.
The other security vendors were:
- Alert Logic, one of several logging vendors utilizing CloudTrail to capture and analyze logs from AWS.
- F5, which has moved its Big IP operating system to the cloud, in a move to allow seamless fire walling and load balancing for those transitioning from traditional data centers to the cloud.
- SafeNet, one of the largest encryption and authentication vendors, has significant cloud offerings including its ProtectV for encrypting and protecting virtual images.
- Xceedium, which has virtualized its privileged access management proxy for the cloud.
- AFORE Solutions, which offers encryption for VMs, VPNs, and VDI environments.
- Barracuda Networks, still celebrating its Initial Public Offering (IPO), which recently announced the availability of their Web Application Firewall in the Amazon Market Place.
- CipherCloud, an encryption solution that can encrypt specific fields as they are entered or pulled from AWS cloud storage.
- CloudPassage, allows security policies to migrate along with virtual infrastructure.
- Dome9 Security, which offers a management platform for AWS security policies and for monitoring access.
- Evident.io launched their company at the conference, stating that they provide monitoring, security, and protection of AWS deployments. They are in a free beta stage.
- Fortinet, a network security hardware vendor which has the FortiWeb Application Firewall, available in the Amazon Marketplace for a year and the Forti-Manager, and Forti-logger that also available as virtual appliances.
- Gemalto, an authentication provider sells one time password tokens that integrate with Amazon Web Services.
- JumpCloud, which is a startup focused on the intersection of development, operation (devops) and security. Its cloud server management allows monitoring of authorized access as well as changes to configurations and operations of cloud servers.
- Norse, which provides a real-time threat intelligence feed derived from sensors all over the globe.
- Ping Identity, which provides cloud single sign-on and federation.
- Porticor Cloud Security, which is an encryption service for the cloud that can integrate into other cloud services.
- Splunk, the machine data company that integrates with CloudTrail.
- Voltage Security, an encryption vendor whose format preserving encryption allows protection of short form data sets like SSNs and email addresses.
- And…Identity Automation, which appears to be a full fledged Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution that I had not previously encountered. Big vendors like IBM, Microsoft, and CA dominate IAM. This small Texas based company grew out of a consulting practice that had been deploying IAM solutions for school systems. Like many start-ups they developed their own technology to meet a need they had and turned into the product itself. Their IAM solution apparently simplifies deployment at tremendous time and cost savings.
The number of security vendors on display at AWS re:Invent, especially encryption solutions, is a sign of the times. The move to the cloud for computing, storage, and infrastructure is in its early stages but already has the taste of boom times reminiscent of the advent of the Internet. This time security vendors are playing their part in the revolution.