VM's brave new world

The world of VM security is just getting started, some say it’s the next big wave of security and I tend to agree.  In the pre-VM days you had to get a fairly big budget to buy a new server which created a fair amount of resistance to adding servers, which in turn made it easier to manage the servers you had since their number was limited.  You also only brought a server on line after taking the time to stage it. And for the most part it was running 7x24 so you could check on it whenever you wanted.  At the time it seemed hard, and it was, but compared the VM-based world it was easy.

Fast forward to today. It’s now very easy to add a server. You do not need to buy nearly as much hardware, VMs are easy to setup, and guess what? Vendors will deliver software on a VM, all you need to do is install and start it and you have a new product running on your network.  No need for a vendor to ship you a blade, they just need to send you a VM to load.

One day you have 1,000 Servers and a few weeks later you have 5,000.  While that’s good for storage vendors, it’s not good for you as you try to keep them secured and stable.  Of these 5,000 VMs several hundred are probably offline…ticking security time bombs and a problem you never had to worry about before.

Never mind all the desktops and mobile devices out there in your wild wild wild west. Never mind the crazy end-users downloading and installing software from the Internet. You have bigger problems now. Your data center is exploding with new servers, and people are running  servers all over the place, off-line, on-line everywhere.  And each of those virtual servers needs to be secured.

This brave new world is an area where we are working hard to help customers. From us being integrated into VMware, to us adding the full stack of security management solutions to our products so you can manage all your new servers. Offline, online, VMs from Microsoft, from VMware it doesn’t matter. You push the big green button and you secure your virtual world  the same you way you secure your physical servers today.