micro-virtualization

Micro-virtualization is technology that abstracts applications and sub-processes from hardware and runs them in isolated environments.

Micro-virtualization relies on proprietary software called a Microvisor (micro-hypervisor), which desktop security startup Bromium developed. The technology launched in 2012 as part of Bromium’s vSentry product. Whenever a computer user launches a task, such as visiting a Web page or opening a document, the Microvisor creates a virtual machine sandbox that isolates the process and limits its interaction with the operating system and hardware. If the process contains malicious code, the micro-virtualization software can shut it down, using Intel VT hardware-assisted virtualization technology, without affecting the rest of the machine. 

The main use case of micro-virtualization is to protect computing devices against the execution of malicious code, but it can also be used to protect applications and data running on untrusted machines.