How To Curb Threats In The Virtual World

By Author: Alice Coope
Total Articles: 213
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The virtualization platform no doubt is in high demand in the current environment. The environment is becoming more complex and risks are increasing manifold.  It is important to test a vulnerability to determine its potentials as a threatening agent to your critical business operations. The testing tools must provide you with comprehensive reporting capabilities, simplified and consolidated testing processes and easy compliance management. However the vulnerability tools have not yet proved their maturity in this regard. The approach to addressing vulnerability management issues is also slow and the results insipid.

Some of the risks in the virtual world are regular that can be addressed with the help of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, patch and configuration management with stringent access controls. Besides the normal risks the virtual environment is also infested with other risks that are created by using single physical servers as a virtual medium for accessing resources. A security attack on a single server would mean infecting not just one system but the entire operation. Thus it is mandatory to ensure ...
... the implementation of efficient vulnerability assessment practices and stringent virtual resource management controls.

Although the hypervisor, a virtualization management tool is perceived as a security risk it has proved to be a highly secure tool as it provides an opportunity to deliver IDS-type services across the entire virtualization environment thereby making the target areas smaller and the solution simpler to manage. The virtual infrastructure must provide role-based controls for accessing and administering purposes. The responsibilities for managing networks, firewalls, operating systems and security monitoring processes must be given to different people with a scrupulous configuration change control process and maintenance of audit trails to ensure that any illegal changes done on the virtual devices can help in tracing the responsible individuals.

When you employ the internal access controls process it must provide you with application protocol gateways, virtual LANs and encryption solutions to keep your virtual devices as far as possible from the external threats. You can also employ strategies such as isolating data at the network layer or the SAN layer to provide additional protection or a separate management access network for the
virtualization appliance. The internal risks are far more lethal than external ones where critical information and servers can be easily transferred onto a handheld device.

Although sophisticated technologies are deployed for beefing up security you can address the security vulnerabilities with a practical and diligent approach. You can control the risks in the virtual environment by reinforcing your basic security protocols and understanding the complexities in the environment.

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