McAfee Virtual Network Security Platform (vNSP) is based on a next-generation inspection architecture designed to deliver deep inspection of virtual network traffic. It uses full protocol analysis, threat reputation, behavior analysis, and advanced malware analysis to detect and prevent both known and zero-day attacks. McAfee vNSP is integrated with McAfee Advanced Threat Defense to provide robust advanced threat analysis alongside IPS and intrusion detection system (IDS) functionality.

1. McAfee vNSP utilizes signature-less, advanced malware analysis to protect against cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and advanced malware.
2. McAfee vNSP uses behavior-based analysis to protect against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
3. vNSP supports AWS, along with VMware NSX and OpenStack based SDN environments to enable automated micro-segmentation and inspection of east-west traffic between cloud workloads.

McAfee vNSP offers integration with other McAfee components to share security-related information and build up the contextual understanding of an attack, providing more opportunity to separate out false positives and hone in on the most important events. McAfee vNSP leverages signature-less engines, behavioral heuristics, and related techniques to detect attacks. In addition, McAfee vNSP taps into McAfee Global Threat Intelligence to “crowdsource” the identification of potential attacks and malicious files across the McAfee network of customers. Finally, vNSP is managed alongside hardware-based McAfee Network Security Platform via a single console to maintain the necessary contextual continuity with a low total cost of ownership.

For Sensor Type 2 (the largest virtual instance) the maximum throughput is up to 1 Gbs, 600,000 concurrent connections, 20,000 connections established per second, and 254,208 supported UDP flows.

McAfee Network Security Manager (NSM) provides an Application Programming Interface (API) framework for external applications to access core Virtual Network Security Platform (vNSP) functionalities through the REST protocol.