Overview

VMware vDefend Gateway Firewall is an enterprise-class, next-generation internal firewall designed to enforce zone-based controls within private cloud environments. As part of VMware's comprehensive security suite, it provides robust protection against lateral threats by segmenting network traffic and applying granular, context-aware policies to every workload. This approach ensures that once an attacker breaches the perimeter, their movement within the infrastructure is effectively contained, thereby safeguarding critical applications and data.

Features and Capabilities

• Zone-Based Security Controls: Implements strict segmentation within the private cloud, creating virtual zones that isolate workloads and prevent unauthorized lateral movement.
• Layer 7 Firewalling: Offers deep packet inspection capabilities, enabling the identification and control of applications and services based on their content, rather than just port or protocol.
• Distributed Architecture: Deploys firewalling capabilities to each host, eliminating the need for network redesign or traffic hair-pinning, and simplifying the security architecture.
• Comprehensive Traffic Visibility: Provides complete visibility into all applications and flows, allowing for superior security monitoring and policy enforcement.
• Policy Automation: Automates security policy application linked to the workload lifecycle, ensuring consistent protection as workloads are created, moved, or decommissioned.
• Integration with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF): Seamlessly integrates with VCF, accelerating the journey towards a Zero Trust security model within private cloud infrastructures.
• Advanced Threat Prevention: Incorporates intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS), malware detection, and network sandboxing to identify and block advanced threats, including ransomware.
• High Availability and Scalability: Supports active-standby configurations for high availability and can scale to meet the demands of large, dynamic cloud environments.
• Multi-Tenancy Support: Natively supports multi-tenant deployments, enabling secure segmentation and policy enforcement across different organizational units or customers.
• Flexible Deployment Options: Available as a virtual machine or as an ISO image for deployment on physical servers, providing versatility to meet diverse infrastructure requirements.