Catbird Named Cool Vendor in Infrastructure Protection By Leading Analyst Firm

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Catbird, the pioneer in security and compliance for virtual, cloud and physical networks, announced today that the company has been included in the Gartner Inc. 2011 list of Cool Vendors in Infrastructure Protection. The report, published April 21st, 2011 by Ray Wagner, Neil MacDonald et al, highlights a select few vendors who offer innovative products or services that have the potential to change or affect a market in a significant way.

Catbird focuses on safeguarding virtual and physical infrastructure via 1) an expansive set of security controls and 2) unique correlation of data and processes from operations, security and networking - areas now intertwined in virtualized data centers - to automatically protect the security posture and compliance status of virtualized assets.

Acknowledging that securing virtualized infrastructure is a critical issue facing IT today, Gartner points out that "one recurring trend among these comparatively new technology providers is their focus on addressing the increasingly difficult security demands of increasingly heterogeneous — and frequently virtualized — computing environments, and doing so very rapidly and with minimal disruption of business operations." The speed with which attacks to virtualized infrastructure can propagate, and the blindness of traditional security appliances to any such act, demands consideration of virtualization security solutions. Catbird's security orchestration correlates data and events from across the virtualized data center to immediately protect assets and data, while generating real-time reports on the compliance status of these systems.

Catbird's integrated solution helps enterprises and government agencies realize the full value of their virtualization deployments both by protecting mission-critical applications as well as maintaining the compliance of the entire virtualized data center against leading commercial and federal standards, including NIST, PCI, HIPAA and DIACAP. As auditors increasingly grapple with the dramatic changes virtualization brings to the most basic security controls, Catbird restores and even improves compliance, freeing regulated data centers to leverage the benefits of their infrastructure investment. Gartner recommends that "Chief information security officers (CISOs) and other security professionals should familiarize themselves with Gartner's 2011 Cool Vendors in infrastructure protection, and with the potential business benefits they offer."

"Gartner stands with leading standards bodies, such as NIST and PCI, in unanimously calling out the security and compliance issues in virtualized systems," said Edmundo Costa, Catbird CEO.  "Our mission is to help enterprises quickly get ahead of security concerns as they transform their data center.  In the context of daily breaches across the enterprise, our customers see no justification to compromise on security and compliance as they take advantage of all the benefits of this new architecture. We think it's cool that Gartner's Cool Vendors recognizes Catbird."

To learn more about Catbird's industry-leading, comprehensive security solutions for virtual, physical and cloud environments, visit http://www.catbird.com or follow Catbird on Twitter at @CatbirdMktg.

About Catbird (www.catbird.com)

Catbird is the industry leader in comprehensive security and compliance for virtualized, cloud and physical environments and a winner of four Best of Show Finalist Awards at VMworld 2010, 2009 and 2008.  Via Catbird vSecurity and the "Catbird" virtual appliance, Catbird is the only company delivering best-practice security for Hypervisor, Guest VMs and Policy/Regulatory Security Compliance. As companies migrate mainstream servers and desktops to virtual environments, uncertainty over security and compliance can impact deployment plans. Catbird's protection eliminates these worries and keeps virtualization plans on track. Founded in 2000 by Internet pioneer Ron Lachman, the company's innovative technology protects tens of thousands of customer systems and networks who rely on Catbird and its partners to protect their valuable IT assets from external and internal threats. The private company is based in Silicon Valley, and is currently recruiting new partners and resellers.

About Gartner's Cool Vendor Selection Process

Gartner's listing does not constitute an exhaustive list of vendors in any given technology area, but rather is designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness of a particular purpose.

Gartner defines a cool vendor as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are: Innovative, enable users to do things they couldn't do before; Impactful, have, or will have, business impact (not just technology for the sake of technology); Intriguing, have caught Gartner's interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

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SOURCE Catbird