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Home Vision Financial issue 04 Slipping through the virtual net

Slipping through the virtual net

Computacenter's Colin Williams shines the security spotlight on virtual infrastructures and explores how organisations can better safeguard their applications and data.

Server virtualisation was nirvana for many UK businesses. Under pressure to cut costs during a time of recession, it offered a quick and effective way to rationalise IT assets and reduce associated operational and capital expenditure. Millions of pounds were saved and a new era of business and IT agility began.

But as with any ‘paradise’, there’s always a catch. The rush to join the virtualisation party meant management issues, such as support and security, were often overlooked. A fact that contributed to the poor return on investment experienced by many companies – according to research by the National Computing Centre, only six per cent of organisations have realised the full expected benefits of server virtualisation.

As organisations implement second-generation virtual infrastructures or expand their existing environments, it’s time to address the lessons learned from the first wave of implementations and put security in the spotlight where it belongs.

Hidden problems and threats

For IT departments, one of the biggest virtual security challenges is that they can no longer see how data is flowing to and from the numerous virtual machines hosted on a single server. No amount of perimeter security devices will help resolve this challenge, which means IT departments need to change their security mindset as well as their monitoring tools.

This change in mindset is even more pressing given the growing prevalence of cloud-based services - both public and private - which are underpinned by not just virtual servers but also virtual networking and security devices.

Whether your business services and applications are running in the cloud, on a hybrid infrastructure or a virtual datacenter (VDC) – the security basics are the same: How do I stop information leaking out? How do I stop hackers getting in?

In the days of one application per server, there was always the last resort of unplugging the device from the network. With dozens of applications and workloads now reliant on a single server, IT departments no longer have this option.

Improving security through visibility

They do, however, have the option of opening a window into the virtual world. Security information and event management (SIEM) solutions, such as RSA enVision™, cut through the noise buried within a virtualised environment enabling IT departments to not only proactively identify security threats at the server layer but also the network.

With an increasing number of SIEM solutions integrated with VMware's VMSafe APIs - which prevent viruses, trojans and keyloggers reaching virtual machines – IT departments can now choose from a more sophisticated security product pool than at the start of the virtualisation adoption curve.

As well as looking at the new, organisations need to review the old: virtualisation presents companies with an opportunity to rationalise their security devices in line with server consolidation ratios. Every firewall comes with a financial and environmental cost, so it’s important to cut back on unnecessary devices.

The decision to rationalise or retain, however, can only be taken after a thorough audit of your current security policies and physical infrastructure – no easy task when faced with finite internal resources.

Working with an external partner will not only speed up this evaluation stage but also open up new opportunities for automation and standardisation leading to greater efficiency and financial savings. 

By blending new management tools with traditional perimeter devices and best practice processes, organisations will be able to create a security framework that not only unlocks greater value from virtualisation but also provides the foundation for cloud-based IT models.

* Colin Williams is Computacenter's Networking and Cabling Practice Leader. The practice consultants hold BS7799 and CISSP qualifications as well as certifications from all the major infrastructure vendors, including Check Point, Cisco, Juniper, Microsoft, RSA, Symantec and VMware. Find out more about Computacenter’s networking capabilities.

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