Virtualization of the data center, departmental servers, and the desktop is changing the IT landscape dramatically, introducing a range of benefits as well as new risks and opportunities. From a risk management standpoint, Virtualization is far more than simply placing multiple running virtual machine (VM) operating system instances on a single piece of hardware. Nor is it simply a matter of examining how strong, or not, virtual machine separation is.

Unpeeling the onion of virtualization reveals a substantial array of considerations. Each physical server now becomes a network onto itself interoperating with networks on other virtualised servers. Network administration, once performed external to individual operating systems on routers, switches, load balancing, and firewalls, is now performed in a microcosmic fashion within each virtualized server and between them. Virtual machines are mobile and they can be combined dynamically or statically to increase performance. New rules and methods for integrating and separating data and processes are introduced. These and many other considerations exist.

Integralis virtualization security services combine a holistic view of the risks and opportunities. We balance with you, as part of an overall suite of assessment, design, architecture, and implementation services, the benefits of consolidation, reductions in power consumption, savings in real estate, capacity management costs and flexibility, configuration management opportunities, disaster recovery options, and other key benefits with the increased operational complexities, multiplicative security risks, and breadth of changes needed in vulnerability management,  intrusion identification and isolation, incident handling, secure system separation, performance management, configuration management, polices, procedures, compliance implications, and other risk concerns.