Securing Your Hybrid Cloud, and Repelling Targeted Attacks, at IBM InterConnect 2016

Trend Micro has a compelling message to share with the attendees of IBM InterConnect in Las Vegas this year: We know your security challenges, and we have the tools to help you address them. As more and more IT leaders continue their journey to the cloud with hybrid deployments, they risk leaving gaps which the black hats are ready to exploit.

Our answer to managing this risk is layered protection focused around servers, networks and users. Two key elements of any set-up should be our flagship Deep Security platform, server security designed with hybrid in mind, and our Deep Discovery APT-hunter tool.

A hybrid world

It’s no surprise that more and more IT buyers are looking to hybrid clouds. They should deliver the best of both worlds – the flexibility, scalability and cost savings of the public cloud with the control and customization of private deployments. But there are challenges. So-called “instant-on” gaps can occur when new or previously dormant VMs are brought online without updated security installed – exposing them to attack. Choose physical server security for your hybrid environment and it won’t properly address this risk. Nor will it protect against unseen major vulnerabilities like Heartbleed or Shellshock. These offerings can also cause severe performance issues as they’re simply not optimized for cloud environments.

The Deep Security difference is that it is a product designed specifically to work across all environments: physical, virtual, cloud and hybrid. Because it is built with cloud in mind it secures against “instant-on” gaps by wrapping each VM in a layer of protection. Virtual patching protects systems from any zero-day threats, and its advanced architecture ensures no performance hit to systems. IT staff can manage all environments from a single console – everything from web reputation, intrusion prevention and firewall, to integrity monitoring, log inspection and anti-malware. And it works with the world’s biggest cloud and virtualization platforms including IBM SoftLayer, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and VMware.

Collaboration is key

But that’s only part of the security story. If you’re a CISO or an IT security manager in 2016, the bad news is that it’s not a case of ‘if’ you get hit with a targeted attack but ‘when.’ And you may have already been hit without knowing it. The toolkits to launch these attacks – designed to bypass traditional defenses, sneak into networks unseen for months and covertly steal data – are readily available on the cybercrime underground. And whether it’s sensitive customer information or IP and trade secrets, all data has a price on the black market.

The problem for security professionals is spotting they’ve been compromised. That’s why we developed Deep Discovery. Our award-winning targeted attack detection solution scans for malware, command and control and attacker activity across 100+ protocols and all ports, all from a single appliance. Using multiple analysis engines including advanced sandboxing, it’s able to spot those unknown threats and suspicious behavior, which could be tell-tale signs of a targeted attack.

But then organizations have an additional challenge: what to do with all that actionable intelligence? How do they turn those industry-leading detection capabilities into an active defense?

That’s why we teamed up with IBM and its Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution. IBM Security QRadar SIEM takes that real-time threat intelligence from Deep Discovery and further assesses the threats, correlates them with other contextual data, and remediates – containing and preventing any threats/attacks.

Big in Japan

Detecting, blocking and remediating the damage caused by targeted attacks and APTs requires a highly intelligent, automated and integrated response. Trend Micro has partnered with IBM in the best interests of our customers to provide answers to a problem that is bigger than any single security player today.

The combination of Deep Discovery and QRadar is already bringing real value to organizations around the world. And we’re delighted that in recognition of our efforts, Trend Micro Japan has been awarded the prestigious Vertical Solution Innovation Award at IBM InterConnect this week.

To find out more about how Trend Micro Deep Security can protect your hybrid cloud deployments, click here. There’s also more on Deep Discovery and our work with IBM QRadar here.