Bromium, The New Malware Cure

Please, God, let this work – even if it’s not completely impenetrable, it sounds better than what we’ve got as we know from the Chinese. “It” is widgetry called vSentry from a UK start-up called Bromium that promises to put an end to malware – at least in the enterprise. Bromium is too young to deal with consumers yet. It will work initially on (presumably clean) 64-bit Windows 7 PCs using Internet Explorer 8 and 9. Later it will be moved to Intel-based Macs and other browsers. Presumably Bromium will prioritize ARM devices somehow and Windows 8 boxes will likely be supported when the enterprise actually starts deploying them. What is does is use a lightweight second-generation species of virtualization the Bromium boys call a Microvisor to create a disposable virtual machine around every task you do on a PC – click on a URL, open a document or e-mail attachment, or a file on a thumb drive – anything can reportedly run in a Micro-VM provided the PC is based on one of the Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 processors that make what’s called hardware-enforced isolation possible. And that’s because of Intel’s Virtualization Technology (VT).

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