Kaspersky Lab has been granted a patent for its Light Agent security architecture for virtual machines. The patent, number 9009836 , was issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and describes a technology designed to provide virtual machines with complete protection against digital threats, without affecting their performance.
In virtual environments, each virtual machine is allocated exactly the portion of RAM and CPU resources it needs.
Reducing the resources required by each virtual machine therefore means that more machines can be started on the same hardware.
In today’s world, conventional cybersecurity solutions should be resource-efficient. However, if a traditional security solution is running on each of the multiple virtual machines in an infrastructure, then security tasks consume a significant amount of available computing power.
The use of newly patented technology contributes to a significant reduction in load. In addition, the installed agent provides more reliable protection compared to the more widespread agentless approach.
The agent offers access to system memory and processes, while also utilizing additional security technologies, such as Internet control solutions, application control, and device control.
Kaspersky Lab’s patented Light Agent technology combines a dedicated security virtual machine with a light agent, which is installed on other virtual machines within the infrastructure. The dedicated machine is equipped with a security module and serves as a security solution for all other machines. The patent protects the hypervisor-agnostic method of communication between the dedicated machine and the light agents.
This method enables agents to not only send data directly to the security unit for analysis and execution of its instructions, but also provide advanced means for protection or remediation, if needed. This would be impossible with a non-agent-based approach.
“One of the main benefits of virtualization technology is more efficient use of resources. Conventional information security tools are not designed to work on virtual machines. The recently patented Light Agent technology helps to reliably protect virtual environments without compromising their effectiveness. Moreover, this technology is currently the only truly specialized security tool for certain virtualization platforms,” said Matvey Voytov, Corporate Products Group Manager at Kaspersky Lab.
Kaspersky Lab's patented Virtual Machine Security Architecture technology is implemented in Kaspersky Security for Virtualization | Light Agent. This solution protects servers and virtual workstations in environments such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer and VMware vSphere. In particular, this product implements advanced anti-malware technologies, deep scanning capabilities of system processes and memory, web control, application control and device control, among many other features.
