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This article attempts to describe virtuallzatlon, the benefits and risks associated with It. and ways to mitigate those risks.
As knowledge and information-based assets become more crucial to business success, companies have made significant capital and operating investments in information technology. Information is an essential part of the business environment and can often be a company's most important asset. As information becomes more important, businesses are finding more effective and efficient ways to access, analyze, and store this information. Currently, the bulk of the cost comes from physical servers and data centers. Even after the initial investment, these servers must be constantly maintained, causing additional operating expenses. Through the use of virtualization, companies have found a way to maximize utilization of available computing resources, resulting in cost savings and additional flexibility.
As the technology becomes more standardized, server virtualization has become more prevalent. Companies are realizing cost savings and "greener" computing. Gartner predicted that by 2012, half of all enterprise computing will be done in some sort of virtual environment, either internally or within the cloud.1 While the benefits of virtualization may seem attractive, one must also consider the associated risks. These risks are centered around the security and integrity of the information being stored on virtual servers. Important trade secrets, customer databases, and other strategically critical information are the lifeblood of today's companies; that information must remain secure, regardless of how it is stored, accessed, and analyzed. Virtualization may initially appear attractive because of additional capabilities and cost savings, but those benefits come with increased security risks. This article attempts to describe virtualization, the benefits and risks associated with virtualization, and ways to mitigate those risks (see Exhibit 1 ).
What is virtualization?
Simply stated, virtualization creates something in a virtual form rather than physical form. This means that multiple computing resources (typically servers) can be hosted on a single physical machine. In essence, virtualization allows a single server to behave as multiple servers. Each of these virtual servers is referred to as a virtual machine (VM). These VMs are created and managed by a hypervisor that manages the VMs' access to the hosts' hardware. Each VM acts as if it were a separate physical machine with its own operating system (OS),...