Virtualization and Security: Friends or Foes?

Computerworld’s article on security in a virtualized enterprise raises a great point: managing multiple OSs, and therefore more data, on a single platform is quite complex. More operating systems, more data, more complexities … more security risks. However, application virtualization does not require multiple OSs on a single platform. More isn’t always better.

The security experts noted in the article concluded that each virtual machine must be treated separately from each other. But addressing each virtual machine independently greatly diminishes the value of virtualization. Why do we constantly try to make things more complex than needed? Enterprises need to better determine when they want, or more importantly need, to manage multiple OSs - most situations do not warrant hosting multiple OSs on a single platform.

By allowing security teams to focus on managing a single OS, independent of the application, best-practice application virtualization initiatives minimize security risks and effort.