The Hindu Business Line : Security implications of virtual tech yet to be explored

Coimbatore, Jan. 1 Security attacks were not just about phishing and data breaches. Virtualisation also made big headlines in 2007 with major players going public. The industry though, has not fully explored the security implications of virtual technology, security experts say.

Businesses increasingly adopt virtualisation technology to maximise hardware usage, increase scalability, provide segregation and lower total cost.

The security implications of virtualisation, however, have not been considered by many enterprises, since the technology itself is not designed as a security solution in many cases, says Mr Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Symantec India.

In assessing virtualisation from a security standpoint, Symantec found some key limitations such as escape from virtualised environments, use of virtualisation by malicious code, detection of virtualised environments and denial of service among others.

While virtualisation presents security concerns, Symantec sees this as an opportunity to explore entirely new security models. “Our collaboration with Intel is an example,” he said and explained how Symantec’s Virtual Security Solution utilised Intel’s virtualisation technology to create a solution on the PC.

“Most attacks are people-based, requiring some action from the end-user. End-point protection is therefore critical in the virtual machine shell as outside of it,” he explained.