Kenna Security Collaborates with VMware to Bridge Security and IT with Risk-Based Vulnerability Prioritization

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 27, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today at VMworld 2019 US, Kenna Security, a leader in predictive cyber risk, announced a collaboration to integrate Kenna Security’s vulnerability risk intelligence with VMware AppDefense (part of the VMware vSphere Platinum offering). AppDefense is a data center security product that protects applications running in virtualized environments.

The AppDefense App Verification Cloud is working with Kenna to help provide risk-based vulnerability management capabilities in AppDefense. The Kenna Security Platform will seamlessly correlate vulnerability data against billions of pieces of threat and exploit information and provide that intelligence into the App Verification Cloud for validation directly within VMware vCenter. This feature will empower VMware admins with vulnerability scoring, security context, and prioritized patch recommendations.

“Security patch management can be a contentious, time-intensive process where security teams provide impossible to implement lists of patches and IT teams performing the fewest patches necessary to ensure security, both correctly attempting to minimize risk. This process strains organizational resources, creates animosity, and wastes precious labor hours,” said Jason Rolleston, Chief Product Officer at Kenna Security. “Working with VMware to combine our technology with AppDefense’s inherent understanding of intended state and behavior creates a collaboration that can empower infrastructure owners to handle vulnerable software in a much more focused way.”

Security patch management and prioritization has long been a pain point for both IT and Security teams. Traditional approaches focus on volume of work instead of impact on an organization’s risk posture. Kenna Security solves this challenge using data science to analyze real-world threat and exploit intelligence and correlate that against the importance of the systems the vulnerabilities sit on. This strategy measures the true risk of the vulnerabilities within business applications and systems and prioritizes actions that yield in the biggest reductions in risk for the business.

By integrating Kenna Security’s vulnerability prioritization and patch recommendations into the VMware AppDefense App Verification Cloud, customers get the benefit of aligning vulnerability data with VMware’s threat and reputation intelligence, and overlaying that information on top of agentless real-time discovery of virtual machine behavior. This can help drive efficiencies within the data center by eliminating the need for security teams to dictate unnecessary patches. Instead, VMware admins are able to determine the highest impact patches and take action, freeing up security resources to focus on more critical projects.

“Security has long been at the core of VMware’s products and solutions and we are constantly looking for innovative new models that can transform security for the modern application infrastructure,” said Tom Corn, SVP and GM of security products at VMware. “We elected to work with Kenna Security due to its effective and innovative approach to managing vulnerability risk, while providing the transparency and operational efficiencies necessary to make security intrinsic to the modern infrastructure.”

About Kenna Security
Kenna Security is a leader in predictive cyber risk. The Kenna Security Platform enables organizations to work cross-functionally to determine and remediate cyber risks. Kenna leverages Cyber Risk Context Technology™ to track and predict real-world exploitations, focusing security teams on what matters most. Headquartered in San Francisco, Kenna counts among its customers many Fortune 100 companies, and serves nearly every major vertical.

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