Q1 Labs Working on Virtual Environment Security Solution

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/05/09

Q1 Labs has announced VFlow Collector for QRadar, a network and application layer activity monitor designed to IT professionals oversee and secure virtual environments.

Successfully monitoring a virtual environment requires the ability to combine logs from virtual hosts with networked application activity, along with the behavior and communication patterns between virtual hosts.

With VFlow Collector for QRadar, the company said in a statement, administrators can view application activity appearing across their virtual networks for security monitoring, application-layer behavior analysis, and anomaly detection. The program also enables operators to capture application content for deeper security and policy forensics.

"Since virtual servers are just as susceptible to security vulnerabilities as physical servers, organizations today now must define and implement appropriate precautionary measures to protect their applications and data that reside on a virtualized server," said Rachel Chalmers, research director, infrastructure management, at the 451 Group, a technology research firm. "With this announcement, Q1 Labs provides a converged view of applications in both the physical and virtual worlds, and can help administrators combat security threats--regardless of where they reside on the network."

VFlow Collector for QRadar runs in a virtual machine and can monitor up to 10,000 flows per minute. The company expects to release it during the first quarter of 2009 for a retail price of $2,500.

In November the company announced the availability of QRadar SLIM Free Edition (FE), a free, downloadable, log management and compliance product that provides organizations with visibility across their networks, data centers, and infrastructures.