Virtualization security technologies: No need to fear #enterprisesec<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n Let\u2019s take the healthcare industry for instance. It works with a lot of personal data and there has been much in the news recently about medical facilities becoming the victims of the breaches and being the source of massive data leaks. It would be safe to assume this industry would be interested in implementing new security means and associated technologies in order to decrease the amount of pressure from cybercriminals and other information threats.<\/p>\n \n<\/p> However healthcare, just like financial services, is an industry bound by strict compliance laws. These laws are intended to protect the\u00a0personal data these industries are working with, but there\u2019s an extra encumbrance: The financial services and healthcare sectors are ranked the highest in being overwhelmed by compliance requirements. Their response rates are of 40% and 38% respectively, according to Kaspersky Lab\u2019s 2014 IT Security Risks<\/a> summary report. The other segments have much lower response rates of this kind \u2013 25-33%.<\/p>\n And this actually does hinder the implementation of new technologies: the less bureaucracy, the better \u2013 at least on the surface.<\/p>\n On the other hand, 49% of healthcare respondents and 50% of financial services respondents reported that \u201csecurity concerns\u201d were hindering their adoption of virtualization technologies. That\u2019s the highest response rate, way above a global average. Security of virtual infrastructure is a newer trend, and its specifics are not always well understood. What is not understood sometimes looks scary.<\/p>\n This data suggests that the perceived \u201csecurity concerns\u201d the survey found to be associated with new virtualization technology is, in part, fueled by concerns over potential extra compliance issues. Also, these industries don\u2019t seem overly concerned with securing the virtual machines they already have.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In the financial services industry, \u201cSecurity of Virtualized Infrastructure\u201d was listed as a top IT security concern by only 16% of respondents, and only 12% in healthcare, compared to an overall average of 14%. Why the disparity? The answer could be attributed to the attitude of \u201cif it\u2019s not broken, don\u2019t fix it.\u201d That makes some sense. But in reality, as shown earlier, IT professionals don\u2019t do well when it comes to understanding their virtualization security options, and the vast majority of existing virtualized infrastructure was being protected by traditional \u201cagent-based\u201d security.<\/p>\n Agent-based security is the same style of security used to protect physical endpoints, and this diminishes the primary advantages of virtualization, swallowing computational resources that could be used for the increased productivity \u2013 we actually wrote about it earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n We can theorize that IT providers in the compliance-heavy financial services and healthcare sectors are concerned that adding new virtual platforms to their networks may require virtualization-specific security measures which they don\u2019t fully understand.<\/p>\n![\"wide\"](\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/92\/2017\/05\/06020507\/wide1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n