Verizon Continues Cloud Services Push With Security Play

On the heels of its partnership with Novell to offer identity and access management in the cloud, Verizon Business on Tuesday unveiled its three-phase cloud security services roadmap as the industry looks off-premise for protection.

The new security-as-a-service from Verizon Business gives enterprises tailored security solutions without the upfront cost of on-premise gear and with a focus on operations expenses versus capital expenses, said Verizon Business director of security product management Cindy Bellefeuille. The new security offerings, which fall under Verizon’s Managed Security Services (MSS) umbrella, are also manageable via the same centralized management console as Verizon’s on-premise security services offerings, meaning both cloud and on-premise, or hybrid, security tools can be managed in a single pane.

Bellefeuille said the first phase, which will kick off in June, will give Verizon Private and public IP with Secure Gateway customers the choice to opt into anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-malware and URL filtering services in the cloud at no additional charge.

In the fall, Verizon will follow with phase two, which adds cloud-based support for network firewalls and intrusion prevention and intrusion detection systems. The services will be available in standalone configurations and can be used on Verizon networking offerings and networking connections from other providers.

Lastly, phase three, which is planned for the first half of 2011, will tie Denial of Service (DoS) detection and mitigation services into the cloud, Bellefeuille said.

’We’ve been moving a lot of our services to the cloud,’ she said, adding that the second and third phases are expected to cost about 30 percent less than their on-premise counterparts and that phase one is free to existing users.

Bellefeuille said the new cloud security services fall in line with Verizon’s vision of ’Everything-as-a-Service,’ where all of Verizon Business’ previous on-premise offerings are available in the cloud in some form.

’This will allow our customers to get a complete cloud solution,’ she said, adding that Verizon will continue to support on-premise offerings as customers make the leap into the cloud.

Other recent updates to Verizon’s cloud strategy include it’s enhancing of its Computing-as-a-Service (CaaS) cloud infrastructure offering in April and the addition of cloud-based identity management and access management security services through a partnership with Novell.

’We’ve been moving a lot of our services to the cloud,’ Bellefeuille said. ’Ultimately, we want to support all cloud-based, on-premise and hybrid needs.’