Catbird reports whether cloud security meets compliance standards

Catbird is adding a feature to its security platform that gives cloud users a reading on how well their data use complies with specific regulatory requirements.

Called vComplaince, the new feature maps the security controls that Catbird’s V-Security software imposes on virtual networks to the controls required by payment card industry (PCI), Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP), Sarbanes-Oxley and the health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA).

The idea is that businesses have an urgent need to prove compliance, and automatically correlating V-Security measures with regulatory requirements removes the tedious step of manually mapping one to the other.

A dashboard shows customers where they stand vs. the requirements and prints reports on that status. These reports can be used to satisfy auditors about certain parts of the regulations being met, Catbird says. According to Catbird, using virtual networks has a negative impact on some of the controls that the regulators want, and using Catbird’s security software can counter some of that.

Catbird’s V-Security works in a VMware environment via an agent that runs on the physical hosts of virtual machines to protect the hypervisor as well as the virtual machines. It can monitor and control traffic among virtual machines on the same physical hosts. It guards against attacks among guest machines and between guests and the hypervisor.

The new features introduced by vCompliance are part of the vSecurity bundle at no extra cost.

Catbird is hinting around that later this year it may team up with one or more cloud service providers to offer vComplaince as part of a service. Stay tuned.

Tim Greene is senior editor at Network World.