Security Virtualization

What Is Security Virtualization?

Virtualization is the procedure of operating multiple virtual instances of a device concurrently on a single physical hardware resource. Conversely, security virtualization encompasses the methods, protocols, and guidelines implemented to safeguard and fortify the virtualized hardware infrastructure.

Problems Security Virtualization Addresses

Virtualization streamlines administrative responsibilities, enhances scalability and workload management, and facilitates the consolidation of network infrastructure, resulting in reduced operational expenditure (OPEX) and simplified management. Nonetheless, virtualization also presents security hurdles that traditional physical security systems struggle to address:

• File sharing between hosts and guests lacks robust security measures.

• Isolation between components like guest OSs, applications, hypervisors, and hardware is compromised.

• Consolidation of multiple servers heightens the possibility of breaches spreading between applications on the same host.

• Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) face challenges in combating malware that targets both physical and virtual machines, facilitating infection through the virtual network. Other security risks encompass unauthorized access, denial of service attacks, and exploitation vulnerabilities.

Numerous organizations overlook the fact that relying on their outdated legacy security solutions can leave them vulnerable to such attacks and potential data breaches.

What Can You Do with Security Virtualization?

Security virtualization serves as a protective barrier for securing perimeter access to a network. It furnishes dedicated security services and ensures traffic isolation within the cloud, offering customizable firewall controls as an added managed service. By harnessing their virtualization investment, enterprises, and service providers can establish a detailed security perimeter, providing dedicated security resources within a cloud infrastructure to tenants and service subscribers.

How Does Security Virtualization Work?

A virtualization system comprises a host operating system, a hypervisor, and a guest operating system. The host serves as the foundation hardware of the virtualization system, offering computing resources such as physical interface cards, CPUs, memory, management ports, operating systems, third-party software, and the hypervisor itself. These components enable the host to host one or multiple Virtual Machines (or partitions) and allocate physical resources among them.