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    Mitigating Virtual Machine Security Vulnerabilities

    By
    Cameron Sturdevant
    -
    April 9, 2008
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      San Francisco (4/8/2008)–The “Mitigating Virtual Machine Security Vulnerabilities” panel with newcomer Fortisphere, old-timer Configuresoft and nonprofit security adviser the Center for Internet Security was so popular that RSA officials had to turn away hundreds of attendees.

      I’ll summarize the most important things that system and network managers should consider when securing virtual machines, but first let me say that Fortisphere is one of the most interesting companies at RSA. I had a chance to sit down with Fortisphere’s Chris Farrow yesterday in a private briefing. In a nutshell, Fortisphere tags VMware virtual machines with a kernel-level driver so that the machine and any children that are cloned or snapshotted from the VM can be tracked as it moves around the virtual environment.

      OK, so here’s what came up at the panel.

      • Watch guest-to-guest communication. Can your IDS or firewall products secure against guest communication on the same host? Most likely not, and this is something to watch for as products develop over the rest of the year.
      • Turn off file sharing between guests and hosts.
      • When factoring in how many guests run on a host (they were only talking about server virtualization on the x86 platform), consider that each VM will have patch management, inventory, anti-virus and other performance monitoring tools also running on the instance. Before telling your boss that you can get five VMs on one physical host, ensure that you measure the performance impact of these management tools.
      • Microsoft and other OS and application makers don’t have “temporary” licenses for products. Keep this in mind when considering how to provision VMs in a test/dev environment where the server will likely live for a relatively short period of time. The panelists had seen some sloppiness in license management at some sites using VMs.

      Keep in mind that VMware just got onto Fortisphere’s board, so if you talk to them and you hear nothing but love and goodness for what VMware is doing, like I heard at the panel today, keep that tie in mind.

      Cameron Sturdevant
      Cameron Sturdevant is the executive editor of Enterprise Networking Planet. Prior to ENP, Cameron was technical analyst at PCWeek Labs, starting in 1997. Cameron finished up as the eWEEK Labs Technical Director in 2012. Before his extensive labs tenure Cameron paid his IT dues working in technical support and sales engineering at a software publishing firm . Cameron also spent two years with a database development firm, integrating applications with mainframe legacy programs. Cameron's areas of expertise include virtual and physical IT infrastructure, cloud computing, enterprise networking and mobility. In addition to reviews, Cameron has covered monolithic enterprise management systems throughout their lifecycles, providing the eWEEK reader with all-important history and context. Cameron takes special care in cultivating his IT manager contacts, to ensure that his analysis is grounded in real-world concern. Follow Cameron on Twitter at csturdevant, or reach him by email at [email protected]

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