Broadcom Enables Enterprises to Strengthen Multi-Layer Cyber Defense and Operational Efficiency with New vDefend and Avi Load Balancer Capabilities

New Updates Layer Additional Defenses To VMware Cloud Foundation to Better Secure the Modern Private Cloud in the Frontier AI Era

Broadcom Inc., a global technology leader that designs, develops, and supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions, announced new updates to VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer to deliver a rapidly deployed, intelligently operated, and high performance multi-layer cyber defense. These enhancements expand private cloud security capabilities, optimize infrastructure costs, and use AI-powered automation to simplify operations for overextended IT teams. With vDefend and Avi Load Balancer, enterprises can achieve a more cyber-resilient private cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) while delivering scale-out workload security, operational efficiency, and rapid roll-out.

“As AI-fueled cyberattacks and vulnerability exploits redefine the threat landscape, a fragmented security approach is no longer an option,” said Umesh Mahajan, vice president and general manager, Application Networking and Security Division, Broadcom. “With today’s updates to vDefend and Avi Load Balancer, we are giving enterprise customers the protection, performance, and automation they need to defend their application infrastructure at scale.”

Defending Against Frontier AI Threat Landscapes
The impact of frontier AI models on IT security demands more than perimeter or point defenses to protect enterprise applications and data. It requires a multi-layer strategy that identifies and blocks threats to private cloud workloads at unprecedented scale and speed. Broadcom is introducing important updates to vDefend and Avi Load Balancer that enhance protection at multiple layers for modern private clouds built on VCF.

Enhanced Lateral Security with vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP):

• Accelerated Advanced Threat Prevention (ATP) with vDefend 1-2-3: Introduces a streamlined, three-step deployment framework that accelerates time-to-value for ATP, enabling overextended IT teams to rapidly deploy defenses in just a few weeks instead of many months. vDefend now offers the 1-2-3 workflow for ATP in conjunction with Distributed Firewall (DFW). Together, they leverage deep workload-level visibility to highlight security posture, recommend rules, and provide guided workflows to further strengthen security.
• On-Prem Malware Prevention: Brings malware sandboxing on-premises, analyzing static and dynamic artifacts entirely within the local network. All vDefend capabilities are now fully supported on prem, enabling enterprises to keep sensitive data in place and maintain control over their security protocols.
• Comprehensive Air-Gapped Support: All vDefend capabilities are now fully supported in air-gapped environments. This deployment model enables secure, offline threat intelligence updates so highly sensitive environments can stay current on the latest threat vectors without ever connecting to the cloud.

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API Protection with Avi Load Balancer:
APIs are increasingly exploited by attackers to infiltrate private cloud environments. Broadcom is further enhancing Avi Load Balancer’s security capabilities by introducing native API protection for virtual machines (VMs), vSphere Kubernetes Services (VKS), and AI workloads. The combination of Web Application Firewall and API Protection (WAAP) protects vulnerable APIs and gives enterprises comprehensive visibility to close security gaps while reducing the high cost and complexity of multiple disconnected tools.

Optimizing Performance to Lower Infrastructure Costs
To counter rising server hardware expenses, the latest optimizations to vDefend and Avi Load Balancer help enterprises get more value from their existing infrastructure investment.

• Leaner 2-Node SSP Deployment: vDefend introduces a 2-node SSP model that reduces the physical hardware required to run the platform by up to 33%¹, lowering infrastructure costs while delivering comprehensive lateral segmentation.
• Distributed Firewall Performance Boosts: To deliver Zero Trust lateral security to data-heavy AI workloads, vDefend delivers significant throughput gains by driving DFW speeds up to 22Gbps on 25G NIC servers (up to 129% increase) and up to 75Gbps on 100G NIC servers (up to additional 241% increase)¹. This amounts to DFW scale-out performance of up to 75Tbps per VCF instance.
• Distributed Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS) Performance: To combat the rise of frontier AI discovered software vulnerabilities, vDefend IDPS enables distributed virtual patching to block workload-level exploits in the hypervisor itself, buying time to roll out software patches. vDefend can now boost IDPS performance to up to 17Gbps per server (up to 89% increase), delivering up to 17Tbps scale-out performance for distributed virtual patching per VCF instance¹.
• Improved Application Delivery Performance: Avi Load Balancer scale-out throughput is also boosted up to 12.25Tbps (up to 88% increase) per controller instance¹.

Simplifying Deployment and Operations with AI-Powered Tools
Broadcom is introducing an AI-powered assistant and advanced migration tool to streamline day-to-day operations and accelerate network migration. By embedding intelligence directly into the infrastructure, these updates can remove operational complexity and speed up the transition from legacy security solutions.

• AI Assistant: Both vDefend DFW and Avi Load Balancer now include AI Assistant to better streamline lateral security and load balancing operations. They embed AI-powered automation directly into the platform to simplify troubleshooting and remediation.
• Automated Migration to vDefend DFW: The vDefend and Avi Conversion Tool (vACT) enhancement simplifies and automates the migration process of legacy, agent-based firewall solutions to DFW, significantly reducing migration cost and speeding up security posture.

These new enhancements are delivered in vDefend SSP 5.2, vDefend 9.1.1, Avi Load Balancer 32.1.4, and vACT 3.0 releases, and are compatible with the VCF 9.1 release.