Why Virtualization Security Is Crucial

If you’re familiar with what virtualization is then you can probably guess why virtualization security is so important. When businesses (especially large businesses) are utilizing virtualization tools to store and send sensitive information, there becomes a great need to secure that data. Failing to do so can literally bring a company to the ground.

Virtualization Benefits

There are many reasons why virtualization has already become so important to technologically-based organizations. Some of the benefits of virtualization include:

• Better and more simple continuity within organizations
• Disaster recovery capabilities
• The ability to control several physically different systems from one main location.
• Means to log and audit data and systems for larger infrastructures.

These are just a few of the benefits of virtualization. There are many others which is why security is becoming such a large issue, especially for large organizations.

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Fortunately, there are some good resources available today that have created some secure solutions for virtualization. Unfortunately, however, there are also many sources today that are set to break through these secure solutions and bring the confidence people have in virtualized solutions to the ground.

There are plenty of ways to utilize virtualization technology in a safe and secure way. Most companies today are taking this risk because of the great benefits associated with this technology.

Security Tips

Some of the basic ways of ensuring a more secure virtual environment include:

• Only store the information that you absolutely have to have on the main, host machine.
• It’s imperative that you keep your OS and all applications up-to-date.
• Utilize good firewalls to keep each individual virtual machine isolated.
• Good antivirus software should be used and kept up to date because virtual machines can catch viruses just as physical ones can.
• Ensure that all accounts on the host machine are secure.
• Do your best not to share IP addresses.

Desktop Virtualization – A More Secure Way?

There are many claims these days that desktop virtualization is providing more security than traditional desktops. Is this true? While many companies are pushing to make people believe this is the case, I’m not so sure it is.

Some of the security features listed with many desktop virtualization solutions include: centralized patching and management, increased availability, and the fact that the data will never leave the data center. While these claims are certainly steps in the right direction, what about confidentiality? What about integrity? Centralized Management features are definitely pieces of the puzzle, but I’m not sure they will provide sufficient security.

The good news is that virtualization security is advancing alongside the technology itself. Whether or not it’s keeping up is another debate, but there are many things that companies can and should do to maintain a basic sense of security.

This post was contributed by Philip Garret. Philip is from Ohio and frequently writes about the advancements in virtual technologies. He specifically enjoys keeping up-to-date with current security measures in virtualization and blogging about his findings. He is a strong advocate for companies like vmware.