Cloud Security
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Unified security across AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI with a single policy framework and cloud-native architecture.
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Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual
Consistent Security for Your Private Cloud and Virtual Environments
Extend enterprise-grade firewall protection to VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, and other private cloud platforms — with the same advanced threat defense, unified policy controls, and centralized management you rely on for physical appliances.
Protect Every Workload, On Every Hypervisor
Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual is a full-featured virtual firewall that runs on VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM, and in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It delivers the same Snort 3 IPS, advanced malware protection, URL filtering, and application visibility as Cisco’s physical Secure Firewall appliances — so you can enforce consistent security policies across your data center, private cloud, and hybrid environments without managing separate toolsets.
Challenges Threat Defense Virtual Solves
As organizations move workloads to private cloud and virtual environments, traditional perimeter firewalls leave critical gaps. Threat Defense Virtual closes those gaps with the same protections you deploy at the network edge.
Eliminate Security Gaps Between Physical and Virtual
Run the same firewall software on virtual machines as you do on physical appliances, so east-west traffic inside your data center gets the same inspection, threat intelligence, and policy enforcement as north-south traffic at the edge.
Unify Policy Across Hybrid Environments
Manage virtual and physical firewalls from a single console using Firewall Management Center or Defense Orchestrator, ensuring consistent policy enforcement whether workloads run on-premises, in a private cloud, or in a public cloud.
Scale Security as Workloads Scale
Deploy additional virtual firewall instances on demand to match the elastic nature of virtualized environments — without waiting for hardware procurement, racking, or cabling.
Key Capabilities Built Into Every Instance
Threat Defense Virtual includes the full Cisco Secure Firewall feature set, delivering enterprise-grade protection purpose-built for virtualized infrastructure.
Snort 3 IPS
Industry-leading open-source intrusion prevention with human-readable rules, improved detection accuracy, and enhanced performance for inspecting traffic at scale.
TLS Decryption
Maintain Layer 7 visibility and policy enforcement on encrypted TLS 1.3 traffic without breaking application functionality or degrading user experience.
Dynamic Policies
Use VMware, AWS, and Azure tags plus Cisco Security Group Tags to build policies based on workload attributes instead of static IP addresses.
Centralized Management
Manage all virtual and physical firewalls from Firewall Management Center, Defense Orchestrator, or Device Manager for unified visibility and control.
Where You Can Deploy Threat Defense Virtual
VMware ESXi
Deploy on VMware vSphere and ESXi hypervisors to secure east-west and north-south traffic across your virtualized data center with full threat defense capabilities.
Microsoft Hyper-V
Run Threat Defense Virtual natively on Hyper-V to protect Windows Server environments and integrate with existing Microsoft infrastructure and management workflows.
KVM and OpenStack
Secure KVM-based private clouds and OpenStack deployments with the same firewall policies, threat intelligence, and IPS capabilities used across your physical infrastructure.
AWS, Azure, and GCP
Extend Threat Defense Virtual into public cloud environments for consistent security policies across hybrid and multi-cloud architectures managed from a single pane of glass.
Cisco HyperFlex
Deploy directly on Cisco HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure for tightly integrated compute, storage, and network security in a single platform.
Multi-Tenant Environments
Isolate and protect individual tenant workloads in shared infrastructure with per-tenant virtual firewall instances and independent policy management.
Management Options
Flexible Management for Every Deployment
Cisco offers multiple management options so you can choose the approach that fits your operations team and deployment scale.
- Firewall Management Center: Centralized, on-premises or cloud-hosted management for large-scale firewall deployments with unified policy, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, and malware defense controls.
- Cisco Defense Orchestrator: Cloud-based manager that streamlines security policies and device management across Cisco Secure Firewall, Meraki MX, and Cisco IOS devices.
- Firewall Device Manager: On-device, single-appliance management for smaller deployments or environments that require local administration.
Integrates With the Cisco Security Ecosystem
Threat Defense Virtual works with your broader Cisco security stack and third-party tools to deliver correlated threat intelligence, automated response, and unified visibility across your entire environment.
Key Integrations
Cisco Talos
One of the world’s largest commercial threat intelligence teams delivers real-time, actionable threat data to every Threat Defense Virtual instance, powering Snort rules, IP reputation, and URL categorization.
Cisco ISE
Leverage identity and device context from Cisco Identity Services Engine to build dynamic, identity-aware firewall policies using Security Group Tags and user attributes.
Cisco XDR
Correlate firewall events with telemetry from endpoints, email, cloud, and network to accelerate threat detection, investigation, and automated response across your security portfolio.
SIEM and SOAR
Export firewall logs and events to your preferred SIEM or SOAR platform for centralized log management, compliance reporting, and automated incident response workflows.
Related Cisco Secure Firewall Products
Cloud Native
Secure Firewall Cloud Native
Kubernetes-based firewall for cloud-native applications with elastic scalability for containerized workloads.
Campus & Branch
Secure Firewall 3100 Series
Purpose-built hardware appliances for branch and edge with hardware-accelerated encrypted traffic inspection.
Secure Your Private Cloud Today
Our Cisco-certified team can help you evaluate, license, and deploy Threat Defense Virtual across your private cloud and virtual environments. Whether you need to protect a single VMware cluster or a multi-hypervisor hybrid cloud, we’ll help you get started.
- Same advanced threat defense as physical Secure Firewall appliances
- Support for VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, KVM, and public cloud
- Centralized management with Firewall Management Center
- Response from a certified Cisco specialist within one business day