Boost VM security: 8 key strategies

Virtual machines (VMs) have become ubiquitous in the enterprise by offering flexibility, scalability, and cost savings. But widespread adoption has outpaced traditional security controls, which often rely on runtime access or agent-based monitoring.

Dan Petrillo, vice president of product marketing at ReversingLabs (RL), said in a recent webinar that VMs can be blind spots for threats, exposing organizations to malware, vulnerabilities, supply chain risks, and compliance gaps.

VMs are really a great technology that comes with a lot of benefits. But as is the case with almost any new technology, it means a new attack surface. And it also means that a lot of the controls that we've had in place don't map directly.

Dan Petrillo

Traditional security controls aren't built for the infrastructure supporting VMs, Petrillo said. That's because VMs are large and complex, and running them through traditional scanning engines or trying to continuously pull telemetry from them can be difficult. Post-deployment visibility can be a problem, too — made worse by VM sprawl.

Here are eight essential strategies for rethinking your VM security.

See Webinar: Securing Your Virtual Machines: How to Identify Risk in VMs

1. VM security controls need to equal those for physical machines

When VMs are deployed by users such as software developers, security may be lax. "An end user may claim that the VM will be only operational for a few hours and then they will shut it down," explained Matt Stern, CSO of Hypori. "But then they forget to shut it down completely, and now there is an attack surface available for exploitation."

2. Tooling must scale to meet the challenges posed by VMs

A single physical system can host hundreds of VMs, which can be churned out from templates very quickly, said Lyndsi Hughes, a senior systems engineer in the CERT division of Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute.