Its been a while since I've blogged about BlueLane's neat concept in virtual security. So, when last week I received a press release about their v4.2 upgrade, I checked out the new feature set.

What I found was a great image, shown above that explains well how BlueLane's concept goes far in protecting virtual machines against security threats. Think about the "eggs in one basket" problem you have when you consolidate virtual machines onto smaller numbers of hosts. Doing this means an attack has fewer touchpoints, any of which can cause greater levels of damage. But, with a security screen in place like BlueLane, monitoring and protecting those fewer touchpoints can actually improve overall security.

You can see from the image above where BlueLane positions itself directly above the hypervisor. It scans traffic in and out of machines and strips away any known problems. This is particularly useful in virtualization environments that host older OSs or applications that may no longer have good levels of patching available by the manufacturer.

Check it out. BlueLane's 4.2 upgrade includes an app firewall in addition to its traditional scanning abilities. You can read more about the update at this site: http://virtualization.com/news/2008/04/21/blue-lane-releases-virtualshield-4.2/