Securing virtual environments and reducing malware risk

Rapid7 announced that the new version of its vulnerability management solution, Nexpose 5.0, will address the complex security challenges presented by the wide scale adoption of virtualization technologies and the rapid increase of malware.

Nexpose 5.0 will introduce Real Risk technology that leverages Rapid7 Malware Exposure, identifying which vulnerabilities are currently exploited by malware, and making the risk scores used for prioritized remediation even more meaningful and contextual to security teams.

Nexpose 5.0 is the first vulnerability management solution to offer continuous discovery of virtual machines in their dynamic environments, ensuring they are included in scanning, prioritzation and remediation efforts.

Virtualization management metadata is used to discover and track assets in their virtualized infrastructure, giving defenders an up-to-date and accurate view of real risk across their entire physical and virtualized infrastructures.

Changes to the status of virtual machines are updated automatically as they are migrated to new hosts or switched on and off.

Once discovered, these assets can be classified by the specific factors that are important to security and operational professionals and Nexpose will dynamically update users if any of those key factors change in the assets so they can be appropriately re-classified. These capabilities for virtualization management will initially be available for VMware vCenter Server.

Nexpose 5.0 introduces Nexpose Real Risk, a risk intelligence system which adds Malware Exposure, enabling defenders to factor malware kits into risk intelligence.

This gives defenders a boost in proactively identifying the vulnerabilities that represent the greatest risk and prioritizing their remediation for the greatest productivity and improvement of security posture.