Intrinsic Security
Protect Your Apps and Data with Intrinsic Security
Intrinsic security is a fundamentally different approach to securing your business. Pivot to a strategy that leverages your infrastructure and control points in new ways across any app, any cloud, and any device, combined with threat intelligence, so that you can shift from a reactive posture to a position of strength.
Intrinsic security also helps meet your Zero Trust goals. Download the Zero Trust Spotlight whitepaper, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of VMware, to learn how you can improve the effectiveness of Zero Trust projects simply by implementing technical and organizational measures using intrinsic security solutions.
Intrinsic Security 101
A New Security Approach
Intrinsic security is a fundamentally different approach to securing your business. It is not a product, or tool, or bundle for your organization. Rather, it is a strategy for leveraging your infrastructure and control points in new ways—in real time—across any app, cloud, or device so that you can shift from a reactive security posture to a position of strength.
It is about using what you have in new ways, so you can help unify your security and IT teams, accelerating how they identify risk, prevent, detect, and respond to threats with the right context and insights.
At its core, intrinsic security is built-in, unified, and context-centric.
Security Needs to be Built-in, not Bolted-on
Rather than relying on a standalone product for each capability, intrinsic security maximizes controls directly built-in to the infrastructure. By leveraging the virtual layer, you can use your existing infrastructure in new ways to protect your endpoints and workloads, networks, workspaces, and clouds, while gaining greater visibility and control over policies that protect your business.
Unified, not Siloed
Security teams frequently work in silos away from IT and operations teams, making it harder to get a holistic, clear security picture. An intrinsic security approach brings tools and teams together by enabling your security professionals to use data and events from IT and operations to more effectively control threats and policies. This unified approach leverages cloud, application, and device infrastructure to provide richer insights about the security environment.
By unifying your teams and technology, you can collaborate more effectively and increase agility when it comes to responding to new vulnerabilities and threats.
Context-centric, not Threat-centric
Intrinsic security should provide you with rich context not just about threats, but about what you are protecting—your endpoints and workloads, networks, workspaces, and clouds.
Context-centric security means you know behaviors and intended actions, including applications, data, users, access points, and configurations. It equips you with powerful knowledge that, combined with the latest threat intelligence, enables you to act faster to prevent and respond to new threats.
Points of Vulnerability to Points of Control
The strategy behind intrinsic security is building security into your infrastructure to turn points of vulnerability into points of security control. This enables you get insights across any app, any cloud, and any device to simplify and strengthen your approach to security and keep emerging threats at bay.
The control points that are critical to the intrinsic security strategy are networks, workloads, endpoints, identity, and clouds.
VMworld 2020
VMworld 2020: Security That's Built-in, Not Bolted-on
Discover how to seamlessly secure data centers, clouds and endpoints with intrinsic security.
Transform Your Enterprise Security Solutions
Segment Networks and Inspect Traffic
Virtualize your network security stack and gain protection that's intrinsic to your infrastructure. Mitigate risk, ensure compliance, and lower costs while vastly simplifying the operational model of firewalls, IDS/IPS, and network access in your data centers and clouds.
Rethink Your Firewall Strategy
Consolidate Endpoint and Workload Protections
Consolidate multiple security capabilities including next-gen antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR), and cloud workload protection. Utilizing platform modules, you can identify risk, prevent, detect and respond to the latest and most complex attacks while hunting for abnormal activities using threat intelligence.
Endpoint Security Whitepaper
More Endpoint and Workload Security Solutions
Protect Your Digital Workspace
Deliver predictive and automated security for users, apps and endpoints across your digital workspace with a modern, cloud-native enterprise security platform.
VMware Named a Leader 3rd Consecutive Year
More Workspace Security Solutions
Mitigate Public Cloud Security Risks
Get real-time insight into cloud resources, misconfigurations, threats, and change activity. Graphically visualize resource relationships and investigate issues. Prioritize findings based on risk, automatically remediate issues, and collaborate with developers.
Read Solution Brief
More Cloud Security Solutions
Market Leaders Choose VMware Security
Zoom Trusts VMware to Securely Support its Distributed Workforce
A leading video-first unified communications platform, Zoom helps organizations and distributed workforces stay connected in a frictionless environment ensuring employees can remain productive and secure no matter where they are working. By running on VMware infrastructure, Zoom can deliver a better experience and improved security. "At the very basic level, Workspace ONE allows us to exist and thrive in a pandemic environment when we have employees all over the world in all different places.” - Aparna Bawa, Chief Operating Officer
Watch VideoMarket Leaders Choose VMware Security
Netflix DVD Strengthens Security While Increasing Efficiency
After evaluating five endpoint security solutions, Netflix DVD chose VMware Carbon Black for its strong EDR capabilities, adaptive protection and time-saving automated responses. The solution’s effective threat hunting capabilities helped the security team become more efficient. Collecting endpoint data 24x7 helps conduct advanced attacker profiling and intelligence enrichment. Netflix DVD increased automation through VMware Carbon Black open APIs making integration easier. “Before we had VMware Carbon Black, we were using traditional antivirus (AV). I reviewed various products, developed an evaluation matrix and did a proof of concept with five to six endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions. Out of everyone we looked at, VMware Carbon Black offered the best value for the DVD division.” - Jimmy Sanders, Head of Information Security
Watch VideoMarket Leaders Choose VMware Security
ICRC Secures Operations of World’s Largest Humanitarian Network
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is active throughout the world aiding people in conflict areas. Because employees and volunteers around the world must be able to communicate quickly and easily with each other, they rely on a secure, global connection. If this is not the case, human lives can be at risk. With its technology solutions, VMware contributes significantly to securing the operations of the world's largest humanitarian network while facilitating communication.
"The data we collect about individuals can save lives - or endanger lives if we fail to fulfill our obligation to store it safely.”
- Charlotte Lindsey-Curtet, Director of Digital Transformation and Data
Market Leaders Choose VMware Security
Preferred Mutual Maximizes Remote Employee Security
Although Preferred Mutual maintains a staff of over 300 employees, many of them work remotely. The company needed a reliable and secure way to manage apps and endpoints. With an array of software-defined solutions for hybrid cloud, mobility, virtualization and networking, Preferred Mutual maximizes remote employee and IT staff productivity while maintaining security over company data.
“All the products are designed to fully integrate and work and complement each other in those solutions.”
-Ben Moore, Lead Systems Engineer
Market Leaders Choose VMware Security
Sheriff’s Office Streamlines Management and Elevates Security
Osceola County Sheriff’s Office turned to VMware to help comply with rigid security standards leveraging VMware Workspace ONE and VMware Carbon Black Cloud, ultimately reducing the load on IT staff by centrally managing hundreds of devices in the field. The solution improves deputies’ access to information while protecting law enforcement data, enhancing public safety.
“One of the biggest benefits of adopting VMware is how all of the solutions integrate together so seamlessly. With just a click of a button, solutions start working together to give us the compliance and performance we need.”
-Daniel Caban, Director of Information Technology
Market Leaders Choose VMware Security
IHS Markit Meets Stringent Security Requirements with Ease
IHS Markit provides information and analysis to support the decision-making process of businesses and governments. With more than 60,000 customers in 120 countries, IHS has moved from a public cloud IT focus to a private cloud initiative to cut costs and meet governance and security requirements as business grows.
“IHS’ customer base is looking for us to solve the hard problems based on data. We have to be one step ahead, drive that delivery even faster. VMware really has our best interests in mind. They challenge us in the way we are looking at doing things, just as we challenge VMware. So, I really look at VMware as a partnership.”
- Ian Barraclough, Vice President of Information Technology
VMware Products for Intrinsic Security
Carbon Black Cloud
Transform your security with cloud native endpoint protection that adapts to your needs.
NSX Service-defined Firewall
Rely on a distributed, scale-out internal firewall that is built on NSX, to secure east-west traffic across multi-cloud environments.
Workspace ONE
Securely deliver and manage any app on any device with VMware Workspace ONE, an intelligence-driven digital workspace platform.
VMware Secure State
Reduce risk and protect millions of cloud resources by remediating security violations and scaling best practices at cloud speed.
Frequently asked Questions About VMware Intrinsic Security
Is intrinsic security a VMware product?
No, intrinsic security is not a product, or tool, or bundle with a SKU. It is a fundamentally different approach to securing your business. It’s a strategy for leveraging your infrastructure and control points in new ways—in real time—across any app, cloud, or device so that you can shift from a reactive security posture to a position of strength.
What are the advantages of an intrinsic security approach?
At its core, intrinsic security has three main attributes. First, it’s built-in, with security capabilities baked into the control points in your infrastructure. Second, it’s an approach that unifies tools and teams to work better together and solve security problems. And third, it leverages control points to get insights into application and IT context as well as threats. These three areas help organizations shift from a reactive posture to a position of strength.
How does intrinsic security reduce my risk profile?
Intrinsic security helps organization reduce their risk through three key attributes. Built-in security means fewer products, agents, and complexity, reducing the chance for misconfiguration and vulnerabilities. Unifying tools and teams across security, IT, and operations improves holistic visibility to identify threats. Leveraging the infrastructure for real-time context and control points means we help organizations better detect and respond to threats.
What are the biggest problems that intrinsic security helps me solve?
Intrinsic security uses technology across the network, endpoint, workload, workspace and cloud to solve the most difficult cybersecurity problems in the enterprise. With this approach, organizations can secure their applications, users, and clouds from existing and emerging threats, identify and mitigate risks, meet regulatory compliance requirements, and do so with less complexity across their security portfolio.
What products are part of VMware’s strategy for Intrinsic Security?
VMware’s strategy is embedding security in everything we do, so nearly every product in the portfolio has security capabilities built-in. That said, the primary security products areas for focus are Carbon Black Cloud for endpoint and workload security, NSX and VeloCloud for network security, Workspace ONE for workspace security, and VMware Secure State for public cloud security.
Access VMware Security Advisories
VMware maintains various programs and practices to ensure that security is standardized through all facets of our products and cloud services. To see a list of reported vulnerabilities, or sign up to receive advisories via email, visit the VMware Security Advisories page.