The move means that Snort and Sourcefire's Vulnerability Research Team (VRT) rules are now available through the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) in the form of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI).
Using this approach means that users can proactively monitor network activity for malicious behaviour and provide automated response, says the company.
According to Sourcefire, by tapping Snort installed on their AMI, customers of Amazon Web Services can further secure their most critical cloud-based applications with the Sourcefire software.
The security software firm adds that Snort and Sourcefire VRT rules are also being listed in the AWS solution partner directory, so that users can easily ensure that their AMI includes the latest updates.
Sourcefire adds that the cloud-based Snort offering can be easily updated by downloading a new machine image and includes an intuitive user interface.
In use, Snort rules are automatically updated and available by the hour, so simplifying management and protection, claims the firm.
Matt McCormick, Sourcefire's vice president, said that the new Snort service enables AWS users to protect the most critical assets in their cloud universe by providing an easy to manage solution that is automatically updated in real-time with the latest rules.
"Sourcefire's architecture and approach provides a number of opportunities to leverage cloud-based services, and we look forward to working with our customers to add even more protection for their web services", he said.