David J Etue, SafeNet | VMworld 2013
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2013-08-29

David Etue, VP Corporate Development Strategy, SafeNet, provides insights into IT security in the age of virtualized environments in a live interview with theCUBE host Jeff Frick at VMworld 2013.

SafeNet has just celebrated its 30th anniversary as a company and focuses on information security and data protection solutions. Commenting on SafeNet's goals at VMworld, Etue says the company focuses on adapting its portfolio to enable people to take advantage of the benefits of virtualization and cloud.

Be it cloud, virtualization or SaaS, "the idea of using unified infrastructures has made folks nervous," Etue states. In the traditional approach to security dollars go into firewalls and IP security." As we've shifted into abstracted environments, we are forced to re-evalluate how we think about security and move up the stack." The challenge is determining how to attach controls to what matters, the identity of he data, and the solution implies encryption key management and authentication solutions. Etue says that as the paradigm shifts, the new role of IT departments transforms them into service providers.

Jeff Frick mentions that a key problem with virualized environments is how to get rid of the data. Etue suggests the answer is also in data encryption. "One of the beauties of encryption, there's a key that allows you to access data." SafeNet's ProtectV solution encrypts all the data coming from virtualized environments. As the data trail becomes incredibly significant and hard to control, "as long as you have great key management, you don't have to worry that much about how that data flows."

Asked what exciting innovations could generate immediate benefits for customers, Etue responds that SafeNet has over 250 different technology partners; what they are most interested in is "seeing the folks that have adapted heir solutions to these virtualized environment." Encryption and identity are enablers to the cloud. Yet, at the end of the day, "the most important things to do for security is have great IT operations." VMware and its partners have made it easier to have great IT operations by offering an inventory of technology and sensitive data.

Future developments of SafeNet products and solutions focus on Hardware Security Modules (HSM). AN HMS is an encryption device, hardware appliance, critical in storing encryption keys. "They are so relevant in these new architectures, as the underlying infrastructure becomes abstracted, being able to have an asset and workload and having tied it down to something you can control" is very important.

David J. Etue, SafeNet, at VMworld 2013 with John Furrier and Jeff Frick

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