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Sure it may be convenient and cost-effective, but is server virtualization safe?
It’s a question IT managers constantly ask themselves.
What if hackers take over my VM and use it to attack another VM?
What if a virus attacks my BIOS chip?
These questions are enough to make any IT professional lose sleep a night. One attack and everything could be wiped out. Right?
Wrong.
Security and infrastructure analysts seem to think that the likehood of hackers invading our virtual servers is slim to none. They’ve never seen a BIOS virus, nor a VM-to-VM takeover and attack. In fact, in the case of the latter, the National Security Agency is coming up with a virtual-server management scheme called NetTop that requires a configuration preventing VMs running on the same machine from interfering with one another.
So where’s the rub?
Well according to a lenghthy NetworkWorld article on virtualization security, the biggest problem with VMs is the potential for IT managers to lose control simply by not being able to see the risks as they crop up. The problem, analysts say, is not the security issue itself , rather the inability to recognize security concerns.
Confused?
Fortunately, NetworkWorld has laid it all out for us in this list of top 5 virtual server security concerns:
- Managing oversight and responsibility - Unlike physical servers, which are the direct responsibility of the data-center or IT managers in whose physical domain they sit, responsibility for virtual servers is often left up in the air.
- Patching and maintenance - The most tangible risk that can come out of a lack of responsibility is the failure to keep up with the constant, labor-intensive process of patching, maintaining and securing each virtual server in a company. Unlike the physical servers on which they sit, which are launched and configured by hands-on IT managers who also install the latest patches, virtual machines tend to be launched from server images that may have been created, configured and patched weeks or months before.
- Visibility and compliance - Virtual servers are designed to be, if not invisible, then at least very low profile, at least within the data center. All the storage or bandwidth or floor space or electricity they need comes from the physical server on which they sit. To data-center managers not specifically tasked with monitoring all the minute interactions of the VMs inside each host, a set of virtual servers becomes an invisible network within which there are few controls.
- VM sprawl - Another consequence of the lack of oversight of virtual machines is sprawl-the uncontrolled proliferation of virtual machines launched, and often forgotten, by IT managers, developers or business-unit managers who want extra servers for some specific purpose, and lose track of them later. Analysts say VM sprawl wastes resources, creates unmonitored servers that could have access to sensitive data, and sets the company as a whole and IT in particular up for a painful cleanup when a problem crops up later.
- Managing virtual appliances - According to analysts, there’s an operating system and application in every virtual infrastructure, every one with its own configuration and patch status and you have no idea what’s in there or who’s going to maintain it or what the long-term risk is going to be.
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