Industry news

IT chiefs divided over the security benefits of virtualisation

IT managers are divided as to the effect that virtualisation has on organisation's security policies, Silicon reports.

The chief technology officer of XenSource has advised that correct configuration is key to ensuring security policies are not broken by virtualisation.

Speaking at the RSA conference in San Francisco last week, Simon Crosby said: "Virtualisation can challenge an IT organisation's infrastructure, which suddenly becomes dynamic.

"You can shift a workload from server A to server B but if the security policy doesn't follow, [virtualisation] has broken it. That's a challenge."

He added that virtualisation can reduce operating systems' number of entry points but those relying on kernel access to implement security could have difficulties.

Also speaking at the event, Stephen Herrod, security chief at VMware, claimed that virtualisation would improve security as it would limit the vulnerabilities brought by third-party drivers.

"With server virtualisation the benefits are profound," he concluded.

A recent report from Gartner predicted that virtualisation would completely change IT, from the way it is planned and purchased to the way it is deployed and managed.