US technology company Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO), which supplies semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions, on Tuesday introduced VMware HyperArmor, a security product designed to protect the VMware ESX hypervisor within VMware Cloud Foundation from increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks.

The company said AI-driven threats now target every layer of the infrastructure stack, with stolen root credentials and unpatched vulnerabilities accounting for most hypervisor breaches. HyperArmor supports VMware ESX 8.x and later releases and is intended to reduce exposure windows without disrupting workloads.

The software provides host-layer virtual patching that blocks malicious actions on ESX nodes before vulnerabilities can be exploited. This complements the network-layer virtual patching available through VMware vDefend and allows IT teams to apply official patches on their preferred schedule.

HyperArmor also establishes positive security guardrails by defining a baseline of authorised host processes and automatically blocking any unauthorised executable or script. Administrators can approve new scripts, enabling continuous monitoring and compliance enforcement.

A further feature is multi-factor authentication integrated directly into the ESX SSH login path, requiring standard credentials followed by a time-based one-time password tied to a separate identity, preventing attackers with stolen root passwords from reaching the command line.