McAfee Rolls Out Post SkyHigh Purchase Security Services for Microsoft Azure

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Cybersecurity vendor McAfee Wednesday unveiled its latest enterprise offering, the first since it completed its acquisition of SkyHigh Networks, a provider of cloud access security broker (CASB) software.

McAfee has extended its cloud security platform to protect Microsoft Azure environments. Skyhigh now is part of McAfee’s cloud security business unit.

McAfee’s Anand Ramanathan

Anand Ramanathan, McAfee’s vice president of product development, tells Channel Partners the latest security service for Azure creates “tremendous new opportunities” for McAfee’s partners.

“Microsoft Azure represents the second-largest and fastest growing IaaS platform by customer adoption,” he said. “As customers accelerate their migration to Azure Cloud, they would expect the same security controls that were available with their on-premises data-center infrastructure to be available with Azure. McAfee’s partners work with large multinational enterprises who have complex architectures in Azure. And these very customers will require a comprehensive cloud security solution to help them fulfill their end of cloud security’s shared responsibility model. This will drive the need for an Azure security solution to detect security misconfigurations and threats across all Azure subscriptions, remediate misconfigurations and guarantee continuous compliance with industry best practices like Center for Internet Security (CIS) Azure benchmarks.”

There are multiple aspects in securing cloud infrastructure that includes securing applications, users, hosts, storage and networks, Ramanathan said.

“The problem of shadow IT also extends to IaaS platforms like AWS and Azure where you have employees creating their personal accounts and using corporate data in such accounts,” he said. “Customers are not just challenged in extending the same security controls that they have been used to in the world of on-premises infrastructure, but they have to keep up with an ever evolving threat landscape in public cloud platforms.”

Native security services available from cloud service providers such as AWS and Azure lack end-to-end workflows with SIEM tools, and don’t offer cross-SaaS and IaaS support that large enterprises often require, Ramanathan said.

McAfee’s cloud security portfolio now includes Skyhigh Security Cloud, Virtual Network Security Platform (McAfee vNSP) and Cloud Workload Security (McAfee CWS). McAfee Skyhigh Security Cloud for Azure is available now, and McAfee vNSP’s support of Azure customers will be available by the end of this month. McAfee CWS, including support for Azure, became available earlier this year.

“Moving applications, data and workloads to the cloud exposes enterprises to new threats and risks,” said Rajiv Gupta, senior vice president of McAfee’s cloud security business unit. “At the same time, the adoption of cloud allows organizations to transform their business. This is why we are on a mission to make cloud the most secure environment for business. The introduction of McAfee Cloud Security Platform for Microsoft Azure is an important step to fulfilling this mission for our customers.”