News

Firefly Secures at the Speed of Virtual Networks

Juniper Networks introduces Firefly Suite, security for virtualized environments.

• By Christa Ayer
• 02/26/2014

Organizations wanting to take advantage of the speed, flexibility, and cost savings of virtualization risk paying the price in security gaps. According to Juniper Networks, these companies need VM protection that meets the varying security requirements of different workloads, but is also quickly deployable. Juniper's solution is Firefly Suite, a portfolio of security products tailored for virtualized environments.

The suite introduces Firefly Perimeter, a virtual version of the Juniper Networks SRX Series Services Gateway, and Junos Space Virtual Director, an application that automates the management and deployment of Firefly Perimeter. When combined with enhancements to Firefly Host, which provides hypervisor-based protection between virtual machines, the suite secures traffic within, to, and from a virtualized data center.

Organizations can embed Juniper Networks Firefly Suite throughout their virtual environment – including the hypervisor itself – or as VMs connected to the various virtual networks to provide tailored security, automation, and control. Automation features help smooth deployment and offer unified management, making it easy to create, attach, and change security policies consistently across the network.

The Firefly Perimeter firewall promises security that can be segmented between zones, organizations, lines of business, and applications. It also provides connectivity features such as Network Address Translation (NAT), routing, and VPN. Organizations can deploy and manage Firefly Perimeter centrally or individually as a security VM for each department, application, or tenant.

Junos Space Virtual Director is a lifecycle management application that lets administrators automate provisioning and resource allocation of VMs associated with Firefly Perimeter VMs. The tool's UI offers task-oriented workflows, pre-tested configurations, and open APIs for integration with third-party management platforms.

Firefly Host is a firewall designed to protect intra-VM traffic, a.k.a., east-west traffic. This hypervisor-based, stateful firewall provides integrated intrusion detection (IDS), virtualization-specific anti-virus protection, and compliance tools.