Six burning questions about network security

Security issues often seem to smolder more than burn, but these six are certainly
capable of lighting a fire under IT professionals at a moment's notice. Handle
with care.

Is server virtualization worth the risk?

The benefits of moving away from traditional servers to virtual-machine
(VM) arrangements are the cost savings in hardware consolidation and remarkable
flexibility. But less-welcome consequences can be security gaps and virtual-server
sprawl, risks that draw fire from auditors.

VM security too often is being addressed after the fact, says Douglas Drew,
senior consultant with BT's emerging technologies office and an auditor for
the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard. "How do you handle access control
or auditing? Suppose I migrate an instance of a virtual machine from rack A
to rack B: Is one a locking rack that needs a physical badge to get to the console
and the other not? Does the VM hypervisor allow for separation of administrators
A and B so A can only logically touch systems A and administrator B only touches
B? How are you re-upping the risk assessment based on the architecture change?"

Like more traditional networks, the VM environment, whether based on VMware,
XenSource or Microsoft, calls for applying best practices defined under the
ISO 27002 standard for secure systems, Drew says. "We've seen some cases
where people are slow to adopt VM because they haven't gotten their arms around
this."

And VM software
out of the box won't suffice for security, many say.

"The virtual machines are mobile, they're designed to be mobile,"
says David Lynch, vice president of marketing at Embotics, a start-up that makes
VM life-cycle management software. "You take a physical server and make
a clone of it. You lose the identity of the physical server, but your existing
management tools are based on the idea you have a physical server."

As designed today, VMware's VirtualCenter management won't prevent VM prawl
because VM ID numbers can be changedand re-set, Lynch contends. He adds it's
not possible to ensure a unique VM ID system for an enterprise using more than
one VirtualCenter.

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