Virtualisation adopters face security challenges

A survey undertaken by emedia indicates that more than half (52%) of respondents say virtualisation systems introduce new security challenges. Top of the list are patching and update (32%), guest-to-guest attacks (27%) and new host software (22%). Interestingly, the later the implementation, the more apprehensive IT professionals seems to be. 51% of current users think that virtualisation poses some new risks, rising to 57% among those planning to use the new solution within the next six months and 66% for those adopting it within the next 18 months. However, system vulnerability does not seem to be the main hurdle for non-adopters. Top barriers in this group are lack of a compelling business case (20%), priority given to other network upgrade projects (19%), cost/budget constraints (18%), insufficient expertise (15%) and security (9%). IT professionals believe they can overcome these threats by taking measures such as staff training and improving understanding (51%), patching, updating and hardening servers (38%), using firewalls (30%), and separating networks, subnetting or routing (25%). Finally, when purchasing a virtualisation solution, the most important criteria respondents look for are server and physical space consolidation (64%), disaster recovery improvements (54%), reduced cost of ownership (49%), improved performance (48%) and ease of use (43%).