StillSecure announced participation in the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. As part of this program, StillSecure will take advantage of the VMware VMsafe technology to bring security to virtualized data center environments. VMsafe enables companies like StillSecure to integrate their solutions - using APIs that are available for VMware ESX Servers - to protect applications running in virtual machines.

VMware describes the VMsafe program as follows. "The newly released VMsafe APIs allow vendors to develop advanced security products that combat the latest generation of malware. VMsafe technology integrates into the VMware hypervisor and provides the transparency to prevent threats and attacks such as viruses, trojans and keyloggers from ever reaching a virtual machine."

With this announcement, StillSecure extends its partnership with VMware, which began in early 2006 when StillSecure released a freeware version of its intrusion detection/prevention (IDS/IPS) product, Strata Guard, on VMware Player. Since then it has also made available in VMware Player a freeware version of its network access control (NAC) product, Safe Access, and its open source unified networking/security platform, Cobia.

"Virtualization is here to stay. For too long people have turned their heads to the many benefits of virtualization in the data center because of security challenges associated with both the virtual-to-virtual and virtual-to-real-world scenarios," said Alan Shimel, Chief Strategy Officer at StillSecure. "Through VMsafe, customers have an integrated solution that helps stop malware before it even enters the virtual operating system. We're looking forward to working with VMware to take security within virtualized data center environments to a whole new level."