Security Risks of Virtualization in Data Center

Security risks of Virtualization in the Data Center are with applications and operating systems to Weakness of security personnel. Technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing in the data center improve efficiency. But in terms of IT security, concerns are not all the way out. In this article on Security risks of Virtualization in the Data Center we will explain what data center managers can do to minimize the security risks in the data center. This is an introductory article on the topic.

Security risks of Virtualization in the Data Center : The Practical Scenario

Amazon, Ebay, Sony – many IT security managers sweat with the concern. Because of all the companies are known for their highly virtualized IT environment and it came to serious safety margins in last year. How can such a thing happen? At Amazon, there were unpatched operating system on a Windows host, the hack on a virtual machine stolen the cryptographic keys from the other machines. One must also rethink: The sooner proven machines for physical security model is no longer valid. That might be a reason why the thoughts around security risks of virtualization in data center are now spreading so strongly. With the hypervisor, there are at least a completely new instance of the overall system and on the hardware, we are pushing more and more virtual machines. In addition, we now have virtualized storage and network resources. So what to do?

Security risks of Virtualization in the Data Center : The Check List

1. Check the applications and operating systems
2. Classify applications according to the security requirements
3. Check the weakness of security personnel
4. Use Secure virtual machines
5. Identify the high risk networks
6. Migrate virtual machines safely
7. Monitor virtual desktops
8. Store encrypted data
9. Hire white hat hackers to push the challenge button

Some of points are actually discussed before, for example; in the article Risks of Server Virtualization we have loosely said about some of the weaker points. Data Center related points were discussed in the article Problems in the Data Center. Points were loosely written again to mention, with the increasing need of elaborated guides on specific points, we basically wrote this index article.

If you yourself can check the points, that is great. We will update and hyperlink each article on the points with time. At least. having a list is better than having nothing.