Broadcom strengthens VMware Cloud Foundation with new AI security

Broadcom has announced new cyber security and compliance features for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), targeting customers in regulated industries deploying private cloud infrastructure.

The company is introducing VMware Cloud Foundation Advanced Cyber Compliance, alongside enhanced solutions across VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer, in response to ongoing challenges around cyber resilience, compliance management, and the evolving threat landscape presented by agentic artificial intelligence workloads.

Cyber security concerns

According to industry research referenced by Broadcom, 65% of attacks on large organisations resulted in data encryption, while 30% included data exfiltration. Compliance is also notably burdensome, with 71% of multinational enterprises reporting difficulties with cross-border regulatory adherence. This emerging complexity, driven by heightened data protection requirements and increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks, has placed greater emphasis on robust and proactive cloud security.

"Cyber-attacks and failure to meet regulatory requirements carry significant human and financial consequences," said Paul Turner, Vice President of Products, VMware Cloud Foundation Division at Broadcom. "A cyber-resilient private cloud based on VMware Cloud Foundation and Advanced Services provides a unified approach to infrastructure hardening, threat prevention, compliance, and cyber recovery that inherently eliminates the complexities and vulnerabilities of disparate point solutions. With our latest innovations, we're taking the next step in simplifying cyber compliance and better protecting AI workloads."

Advanced Cyber Compliance

Broadcom's VCF Advanced Cyber Compliance Advanced Service aims to address needs in highly regulated environments. The service combines technologies intended to deliver enhanced compliance, resilience, and security for VCF deployments, centring on three main business outcomes.

Continuous Compliance Enforcement at Scale integrates VCF SaltStack features into the operations console, enabling fully automated monitoring and remediation to ensure ongoing compliance. Managed and secure data engine images, alongside automated patching, are introduced to help maintain critical database compliance.

Automated Cyber and Data Recovery is designed to restore operations after cyber incidents or IT disruptions such as ransomware, power outages, or hardware failures. This service leverages clean room recovery environments, push-button virtual machine network isolation, and integrated validation tools to support rapid recovery and detect both fileless and file-based malware strains. The inclusion of operational cloning, backup, and restore is also intended to increase data resilience.

For platform security and incident response, the suite introduces secure-by-design container images with enterprise support, improved secure computing at the infrastructure core to reduce the attack surface, and an advanced compliance and risk management framework with proactive assessments and early access to compliance updates.

vDefend and private cloud protection

The company is enhancing VMware vDefend, which works with VCF to deliver micro-segmentation, Zero Trust principles, and threat detection across compute, storage, and networking layers.

Specifically targeting artificial intelligence workloads, vDefend is rolling out a technology preview of Zero Trust lateral security designed for agentic AI environments. This feature establishes secure communication paths and access controls using Zero Trust models to protect new attack surfaces created by AI deployments.

Automation-driven workflows will be introduced to accelerate Zero Trust implementation, enabling succinct multi-stage segmentation and refined distributed firewall policies via new firewall rule analysis. Enhanced detection of fileless malware will utilise the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI), focusing on in-memory threats that use scripting languages such as PowerShell, VBScript, and Jscript, improving both in-memory detection and telemetry for forensic activity.

A new Network Detection and Response (NDR) sensor will provide comprehensive, data centre-wide threat visibility. This sensor collects traffic across all workloads and network devices, offering insights for enterprise-wide threat campaigns and further strengthening the security posture.

Avi Load Balancer updates

The VMware Avi Load Balancer is also receiving several key updates for use in VCF-based private clouds.

Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) support will be incorporated to help address risks from quantum computing, using algorithms specified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to offer quantum-resistant encryption. Mutual Transport Layer Security (mTLS) authentication will be used for Kubernetes environments to add another layer of security to application traffic.

Avi will feature a built-in Web Application Firewall (WAF) assessment tool to help users evaluate web-level attack readiness and prioritise protection starting from high-risk applications. Additionally, the company is previewing security features for Model Context Protocol (MCP) traffic, a standard adopted by AI applications, by providing WAF-based protection, MCP session persistence, and authorisation tools.

These updates are geared towards helping customers reduce risk exposure in cloud environments that are increasingly critical for digital operations in sectors with stringent regulatory and security demands.