Pros and Cons of VMware's New Security Guide

VMware has released another hardening guideline, this time for VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5. Its guidance can also apply to version 3.0, though. This guide is useful in that it actually looks as ESXi as more than an appliance, as does the ESX Security Technical Implementation Guide from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Administration (DISA), which I discussed a couple of weeks ago.

The new version of VMware's guide is a vast improvement over the older one, but still only looks at a subset of the entire virtual environment and still maintains that a directory service is required to secure VMware VI3 .x but gives no information on how to achieve this security. Just use one and all will be well is not a good game plan- it may leave you even less secure than before.

I may have my sights set a little high on what I'd like to see from a hardening guideline. Chris Hoff at Rational Security certainly thinks so, and others may as well.

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