Along with the new vShield Edge and vShield App (which apparently is a rebrand for vShield Zones), VMware is preparing a third security product, in collaboration with TrendMicro.
Internally codenamed Seraph, it seems a security framework for agent-less antivirus scanning that leverages the VMsafe API.
ApparentlyVMware originally planned to partner with both TrendMicro and McAfee for this project, but TechTarget recently reporting about the news only mentioned the former. Maybe McAfee is still in, but it’s more likely that VMware decided to drop the partnership after the security vendor announced a big security project with Citrix on XenClient, XenDesktop and XenServer.
Exactly like what McAfee and Citrix are planning to do, VMware too wants to move the antivirus endpoint agent outside the guest operating systems, reducing the unnecessary duplication of agents and the consequent I/O overload the they generate.
The agent would be moved into a dedicated virtual machine, accessing to the others through the VMsafe API, as an official presentation available online confirms:
