Catbird announced the Certified Virtual Security Professional (CVSP) Program, a professional training and certification program for virtual security. The CVSP program provides IT professionals with in-depth knowledge and tools required for best-practice implementation of security in a virtual environment.

The CVSP curriculum encompasses emerging industry standards and guidelines, including requirements established by government agencies and virtualization platform vendors, as well as seasoned real world experience from Catbird consultants in the field. Course topics include migration of existing physical best practices to virtual infrastructure, virtual security implementation architecture, compliance solutions to ensure separation of duties, secondary controls and change controls within a virtual context, virtual network configuration and management. CVSP graduates will be fully-trained in guiding their customers’ or their own virtualization security strategies.

“Virtualization security is a critical requirement in the planning and deployment of production-ready virtualized environments, but IT professionals have had to scramble to figure this stuff out on their own,” noted Michael Berman, CTO of Catbird. “Catbird’s CVSP provides the training and certification IT professionals need to come up to speed quickly.”

The two-part program includes one full day of coursework, supplemented by a second day of hands-on lab work and Q&A time. Completion of the one-day course gives trainees introductory, actionable information. Students in the two-day course graduate with an advanced understanding of the myriad of security and compliance issues surrounding virtualization security with hands-on training on avoidance and mitigation. The CVSP course is delivered by authorized training centers.

“It’s about time that expert training in virtual security would be available to security engineers in a professional setting,” commented Dusty Wince, CEO of Catbird training partner Knowledge Consulting Group. “Our CVSP-certified engineers have all been extremely satisfied by what they have learned and can apply within the virtual environment on clients’ sites. This is a growing need that Catbird has wisely filled.”

The CVSP program is designed to enable security engineers, along with IT audit and compliance professionals, to conduct security assessments and implement virtual infrastructure security measures to maintain compliance with regulatory and internal standards. Graduates of the course will come away with the ability to analyze the efficacy of their existing virtual security protocols, as well as the know-how to take proactive measures to enhance their existing security. Upon completion of the CVSP program, students are eligible to sit for the CVSP certification exam, consisting of a practice deployment and a multiple choice test. A strong background in VMware ESX Server 3.x, Virtual Center 2.x, Linux networking, and network security concepts is recommended for participants, as is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification.

“Our clients’ virtualization deployments were moving from the lab into production and we realized we needed additional training to ensure they did not compromise compliance or security in the process,” said Chad Kireta of solution provider Prevent Strategies, in Chambersburg, PA. “We were thrilled to discover that Catbird’s CVSP was available to help educate us and move our customers’ virtualization plans forward.”

Catbird is a pioneer in the virtual security industry. Its V-Security suite is a comprehensive security and compliance solution for virtual and physical infrastructures. V-Security is a fully-automated Security-as-a-Service solution built upon a stateless architecture that is 100% plug-and-play for both physical and virtual environments. V-Security includes VMShield, a dedicated security solution specifically designed to control and secure the virtual machine console, and HypervisorShield to guard against unauthorized hypervisor network access and attack. Via its IPS/IDS, Rogue VM monitoring, firewall and policy enforcement, Catbird is one-stop shopping for the most critical areas in virtual network security.

Catbird’s V-Security is delivered through Catbird partners. The CVSP is available through authorized training centers. For more information about this or Catbird’s full line of stateless enterprise-grade in-the-cloud security solutions, visit the company’s Web site at www.catbird.com or contact your local Catbird Partner.