{"id":1114,"date":"2010-04-20T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T15:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=1114"},"modified":"2010-04-20T07:00:15","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T15:00:15","slug":"technology-understanding-security-for-vm-environment-is-lagging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/technology-understanding-security-for-vm-environment-is-lagging\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: Understanding Security for VM Environment is Lagging"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"_mcePaste\">Virtualization is the darling of industry analysts. \u00a0In fact it&#8217;s been in Gartner&#8217;s list of <a title=\"Gartner's Top 10 strategic technologies for 2010\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gartner.com\/it\/page.jsp?id=1210613\" target=\"_blank\">top 10 strategic technologies<\/a> for a number of years. \u00a0And there are good reasons for the hype around virtualization. \u00a0The benefits of using it \u00a0include:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Helps maximize infrastructure and shrinks the number of servers needed<\/li>\n<li>Reduces administrative costs<\/li>\n<li>Fewer physical machines to upgrade, monitor and maintain<\/li>\n<li>Provides high accessibility of applications and data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div>But despite these benefits, based on new information, Gartner is warning companies to review their security practices used with virtualized servers. \u00a0In fact they&#8217;ve found that as many as 60 percent of virtualized servers are less secure than traditional non-virtualized servers. \u00a0The problem isn&#8217;t a flaw in the virtualization technology, it is a problem with education and lack of sophisticated administration tools for the new systems.<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Virtualisation is not inherently insecure,&#8221; said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner Research fellow. \u00a0 &#8220;However, most virtualised workloads are being deployed insecurely. The latter is a result of the immaturity of\u00a0tools and processes and the limited training of staff, resellers and consultants.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>Gartner does not expect the security problem to improve much over the next two years, which isn&#8217;t good. \u00a0Today only about 18 percent of operations that potentially can be virtualized are run in a VM, but by the end of 2012, <a title=\"Gartner on virtualization\" href=\"http:\/\/www.itnewsonline.com\/news\/Gartner-Identifies-Six-Most-Common-Virtualization-Security-Risks\/17046\/8\/3\" target=\"_blank\">Gartner is predicting<\/a> that half of virtualizable operations will be in VMs. \u00a0 Not until\u00a02015 do they expect the 60 percent difference between security on virtualized and non-virtualized servers to drop to 30 percent.<\/div>\n<div>The Gartner report <a title=\"Garter on why VMs are not as secure as regular servers\" href=\"http:\/\/www.computerweekly.com\/Articles\/2010\/03\/15\/240599\/top-five-virtualisation-security-issues.htm\" target=\"_self\">identified <\/a>the following five reasons for why security in virtualized environments is often lacking.<\/div>\n<div>\n<ol>\n<li>40 percent of the time IT security people are not involved in the architecture and setup of virtualized environment.<\/li>\n<li>In virtualized environments, application density is higher. \u00a0Compromising the virtualization layer can lead to the compromise of all applications in the virtual environment.<\/li>\n<li>VM-to-VM communication happens frequently, but it is specialized and abuse typically\u00a0can not\u00a0be detected by standard network intrusion detection software or devices.<\/li>\n<li>Applications with very different trust levels are often combined and running side by side on the same virtual machine without sufficient separation.<\/li>\n<li>Central administration in VM environments can be reached by many 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