Bitdefender Joins Xen Project Advisory Board

Bitdefender has been named an Advisory Board member for the Linux Foundation-hosted Xen Project formed of major cloud companies, virtualization providers, enterprises and silicon vendors that advise and support development of Xen Project software for cloud computing, embedded, IoT use-cases, automotive and security applications.

Leveraging the Xen Project’s hypervisor, Bitdefender and Citrix created the first commercial application for Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI). The hypervisor’s API allows for hardware-assisted virtual machine memory introspection that can protect against memory intrusions and manipulation techniques common in advanced and sophisticated attacks. This new layer of security has been successful in preventing even military-grade cyber weapons, such as the EternalBlue vulnerability used during the WannaCry outbreak.

“Security insights gained from the Xen Project hypervisor VMI capabilities have revolutionized security. Instead of being reactive to what is occurring, security can be a proactive effort by using the architecture of virtualization to bridge the context gap,” said Shaun Donaldson, Director of Strategic Alliances at Bitdefender. “We enjoyed working with the Xen Project as a contributor, and are pleased to now be an Advisory Board member. We look forward to contributing to the creation and extension of security capabilities, building on examples like VMI, within the Xen Project framework.”

“Security companies look to use the Xen Project hypervisor as its architecture can help mitigate security risks through use of sandboxing techniques, security features like VMI, KCONFIG and Live Patching, and extensive security process,” said Lars Kurth, advisory chairperson for the Xen Project. “Bitdefender is the first security company to join the Xen Project board, and we are excited to increase our expertise and practice in the security space to continue our momentum here and expand to other security-first companies.”

The Xen Project Advisory Board consists of 10 board members involved in financial support, technical contributions, and high-level policy guidance for the Xen Project Hypervisor, to expand on the technical and marketing success of virtual machine memory introspection infrastructure.