VMware NSX Service-defined Firewall
Protect Your Distributed Data Center with a Purpose-Built Internal Firewall
Rely on a distributed, stateful Layer 7 internal firewall, built on NSX, to secure data center traffic across virtual, physical, containerized, and cloud workloads. Gain superior protection against lateral movement of malware with advanced threat prevention that includes IDS/IPS, network sandbox, and network detection and response. VMware’s unique, intrinsic approach to security simplifies deployments and streamlines firewalling of every workload — at a fraction of the cost.
Distributed Internal Firewall for Dummies
Read the Internal Firewalls for Dummies eBook to understand why protecting network traffic within the data center is a unique challenge – and how firewalls have evolved to protect them.
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Benefits of Service-defined Firewall
Mitigate Security Risk
Gain superior ability to prevent lateral movement of malware inside the data center with a stateful Layer 7 firewall built into your infrastructure. Operating from a unique position within the hypervisor, NSX Service-defined Firewall enjoys unmatched visibility into the network and unrivaled workload context to provide better threat protection while remaining isolated from the attack surface.
Ensure Compliance
Eliminate the visibility and security blind-spots that result from misaligned controls across disparate solutions, and the selective traffic inspection that comes with appliance-based architectures. Demonstrate compliance by easily creating virtual security zones and complete Layer 7 security coverage for your sensitive applications and data.
Accelerate Security Operations
Enable security to move at the speed of development to provide a true public cloud experience on-premises, decoupled from physical infrastructure constraints. Deliver “security as code” with an API driven, object-based policy model which ensures new workloads automatically inherit relevant security policies and automates policy mobility with workloads.
Simplify Security Architecture
Replace multiple application-based solutions with L2-L7 virtual controls built into the NSX platform, thus reducing CapEx by up to 75%. Radically simplify network deployment and operations by eliminating the need for changes to the physical network, complex traffic hair-pinning architectures, or agent management overhead.
How is VMware Internal Firewall Different?
Distributed architecture
Elastic throughput
Built-in security
Superior workload context
What Are the Key Use Cases for the NSX Service-defined Firewall?
Rapidly Deploy Network Segments
Quickly create and reconfigure network segments, virtual security zones, and partner domains by defining them entirely in software. Avoid the need to re-architect your network or deploy discrete appliances.
More on Network SegmentationMeet Compliance Requirements
Address regulatory requirements (such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, etc.) for compliance zones by inspecting all east-west traffic for threats with a fully distributed IDS/IPS delivered in software.
More on IDS/IPSPrevent Lateral Movement of Attacks
Leverage multiple advanced threat prevention techniques to detect intrusion attempts and malicious behavior from known and unknown malware, and block threats from moving laterally across your network.
More on Advanced Threat PreventionAchieve Zero Trust with Micro-segmentation
Easily create, enforce, and automatically manage granular micro-segmentation policies between applications, services, and workloads across multi-cloud environments spanning VMs, containers, and bare metal infrastructure.
More on Micro SegmentationSpotlight on Internal Firewall
Secure East-West Traffic for the Modern Data Center
See why traditional firewall architectures are failing to protect east-west network traffic — and how internal firewalls can solve the problem.
Re-Think Your Firewall Strategy to Achieve Zero Trust Security
Security professionals are realizing that an over-reliance on traditional firewalls is creating sub-optimal trade-offs between security coverage and operational simplicity.
Read the Forrester Study on East-West FirewallingKnock, Knock: Is this Security Thing Working?
SANS discusses challenges with today’s data center security and the need for an intrinsic approach.
Download White PaperProtecting Physical Workloads with the Service-defined Firewall
Secure zone boundaries and physical workloads with NSX gateway firewalling and bare metal agents with unified management.
Read the BlogPowering Customer Success with the NSX Service-defined Firewall
Securely Drive Productivity and Flexibility
Preferred Mutual maximizes remote employee and IT staff productivity while ensuring the security of company data with NSX, Workspace One, and Horizon.
Provide a Reliable Learning Platform
Region 11 supports students and teachers with a more secure, integrated, and reliable technology platform via VMware solutions that include NSX and Horizon.
Meet Government Security Regulations
Cenitex delivers the rock-solid security that governments require with a fully-integrated range of VMware solutions across data centers and digital workspaces.
Elevate and Consolidate Security
USSFCU went from planning to deployment in just weeks, replacing multiple legacy security tools with NSX for networking and micro-segmentation as part of their zero trust initiative.
Related Products
Deploy Advanced Threat Prevention
Inspect all network traffic and obtain the industry’s highest fidelity insights into advanced threats.
More on Advanced Threat PreventionGet Recommended Security Policies
Simplify operationalizing micro-segmentation with rich application topology visualization and automated policy recommendations.
More on NSX IntelligenceRely on Advanced Threat Analysis
Gain complete visibility into advanced malware behavior with a unique full-system emulation-based network sandbox that detects malware more accurately.
More on NSX Advanced Threat AnalyzerBuild on a Foundation of NSX
Connect and protect applications across your data centers and clouds with virtualized networking and security via VMware NSX.
More on NSXGet Advanced Threat Detection with IDS/IPS
Replace discrete appliances with a distributed software IDS/IPS solution to detect lateral threat movement on east-west traffic and easily achieve compliance.
More on NSX Distributed IDS/IPSDeliver Intrinsic Security
Leverage your infrastructure to provide deep visibility and security for your network and workloads across data center, cloud, WAN, and endpoints.
More on Intrinsic SecurityResources
Learn & Evaluate
- Forrester White Paper: To Enable Zero Trust, Rethink Your Firewall Strategy
- SANS White Paper: Knock, Knock: Is this Security Thing Working?
- 5 Reasons Why Internal Firewalls & Perimeter Firewalls are Different
- Intro to the NSX Service-defined Firewall and Its Precursors
- Internal Firewall: The Best Way to Protect East-West Traffic White Paper
- VMware NSX Service-defined Firewall Solution Overview
- Four Barriers to Micro-segmentation White Paper
- NSX Service-defined Firewall to Secure Virtual Desktops Solution Overview
- VMware’s Intrinsic Security Vision Blog Post
- Advanced Security for VMware Cloud Foundation Blog Post
- Professional Services for Virtual Cloud Network Solution Overview