Organizations worldwide can benefit from virtualization technologies by optimizing resources and reducing costs on hardware and maintenance. However, using virtual workloads (virtual machines, servers, routers and other nodes and networks) might lead to specific virtualization security issues. Safeguarding your business in virtual environments requires a complex approach towards understanding the threats, capabilities and practices of virtual data protection.
In this post, we discover:
- What virtualized security is;
- Which threats you should be aware of to ensure strong VM security and overall protection;
- Which virtualization best practices to apply for efficient virtual data protection.
What is Virtualized Security?
Virtualized security (also known as security virtualization) covers the entire variety of measures and solutions designed for virtual data protection. For example, if regular hardware-based network security relies on physical security in routers, switches or firewalls, virtualized security is built and maintained with virtual nodes only.
Virtual data protection solutions such as network security virtualization, virtualized servers and desktops, among others, can help you enhance the reliability and overall security of your organization’s IT environment. For instance, with virtualized networks, you can simplify traffic management. Virtual servers can reduce the threat of breaches through network segmentation, buying you additional time to react. A virtual desktop, which streamlines endpoint protection, is the main tool when securing virtual machines.
Main Virtualization Security Issues
On one hand, virtualization security issues remain the same as those for physical environments, given that a virtualized environment is the digital simulation of regular physical hardware and normal processes. On the other hand, issues that are specific to virtual workloads and infrastructures also require adequate security solutions if you want your virtual environments to be stable and available.
The variety of problems threatening virtual infrastructures in general and some virtual machine security in particular is wide. It is important to learn about the issues listed below, then try to answer the question: which of the following is the most dangerous type of threat when using virtualization?
The point is that you need to understand every threat. Knowing what to defend against, you can build a more effective security system and faster response plans.
Malware and Ransomware
Spyware, adware, viruses and other malware are arguably the most common threats to anyone using computers, smartphones and tablets. Both individual users and organizations of any size and in any industry are at risk of malware infiltration. Still, among all malware types, ransomware is probably the most notorious.
Ransomware is designed with a specific purpose: it gets into the IT environment and begins to encrypt all reachable data to demand a ransom for decryption keys afterwards. With more than 72% of firms being targets for ransomware attacks all over the world between 2018 and 2023, and more than 95% year-over-year growth in 2022-2023, organizations must develop a thorough anti-ransomware plan. That plan should include both solutions to prevent ransomware infiltration and efficient steps to mitigate the outcomes of a successful attack.
External Threats
An external threat is the most common one for IT security experts. Mainly, physical and virtual machine security methods are designed and applied to prevent external breaches. An external threat includes any cyberthreat coming from outside an organization’s infrastructure. A freelance hacker breaching the system and an expert group preparing a global attack to hit some organization’s main market competitor belong to this category.
Insider Threats
Here, the threat source is a malicious insider: an employee who can have different reasons to become a bad actor. The problem is that such bad actors have a starting point that is a lot more problematic for IT security specialists. An insider knows the infrastructure from within and can have access and means allowing them to disable, for instance, virtual server security and then cause a global data loss incident.
VM Snapshot Storing Policies
Though VMware security best practices normally and reasonably include recommendations to store snapshots for no longer than 72 hours, organizations frequently exceed those limits. IT staff members tend to perceive VM snapshots as backups, which is not right. Snapshots depend on VM disks, thus being vulnerable to any error occurring at, for instance, hypervisor or hardware level.
Moreover, storing a lot of snapshots consumes notable storage volumes. Without appropriate configuration and regular monitoring, VM snapshots can become the reason for a global failure after overflowing the entire disk.
VM Sprawl
Creating a VM with modern hypervisors is simple and fast, and that is one of the virtualization advantages that IT experts use to make systems more efficient. Yet on the other side, virtual machines created once to perform some test can then be forgotten and ignored. The danger of such VMs is that they don’t receive regular app updates and security checks, thus becoming weak links in the organization’s virtualized security chains.
Virtualized Security Best Practices
Any IT protection system, be it physical machine, on-premise VM or cloud VM security, severely depends on the most basic measures. Below we mention the best practices that may seem obvious solutions. However, the simplicity of these measures can sometimes be the reason why you might overlook them.
Separate Protected Network Connections
With configuration and settings of virtual networks, you can keep connections between various nodes inside your infrastructure flexible. Therefore, modification of virtual networks is frequent and can be desynchronized with security policies when you accidentally establish an unnecessary connection between VMs, data repositories or services. Unwanted data circulation is the result here, which can cause a threat of leakage that you may not notice until the incident occurs.
Avoiding such incidents is possible when you keep virtual networks separated and double-check connections. Revise network routes regularly as a part of your security routine, and conduct additional revisions every time new connections are set for virtual machines.
Protect Management APIs
Another critical solution to strengthen virtual machines and environments is to isolate infrastructure management from the service. Using management APIs, IT experts can configure and manage services and functions, features and behavior. Consequently, an API can create security risks due to the access it provides.
You should protect your management APIs thoroughly, especially the ones in control of your infrastructure nodes. Provide only qualified and authorized team members with access to such APIs and review access policies regularly to avoid misconfiguration resulting in security weaknesses.
Verify VM Components
Whenever you start using new functions, components and features on a virtual machine, they should correlate with security requirements, including internal data policies and regulatory compliance norms. At the same time, security capabilities of every VM should be able to stand against regular outside and insider threats with equal efficiency.
After a new function, feature or application is introduced, that new element can cause protection failures that you won’t be able to track after the initial release. A single unverified element makes a VM as a whole a vulnerable brick in your protection wall. That weak VM can later provide entry points to develop an attack further into the environment.
Verifying VM components before, during and after their introduction is a solid way to minimize the number of vulnerabilities in your virtual data protection system. Create a workflow with the required checkpoints to verify and manage VMs in your environment throughout their lifecycle. Then, each time a change is introduced to a virtual machine, go through that verification workflow A to Z.
Isolate Hosted Elements
To enhance VM security, consider isolating every new element you host. For example, a feature or a service that needs internet connection to function properly can be attacked by hackers.
A solution that makes that feature more secure is isolating the host connection inside a specific subnetwork. The method can suit any workload, including virtual, physical or cloud machines.
Regular VM Backups
You can build the most advanced virtual data protection system with multiple security layers, ideally designed networks and perfectly maintained workloads. However, a bad actor that aims to bypass your security and is qualified enough can figure out an attack route and create appropriate malware to reach their goal. In such conditions, the only reliable way to keep your data and workloads secure is to regularly back up critical data and infrastructure elements.
With a modern VM backup solution, such as NAKIVO Backup & Replication, you can configure automated backups for VMs and send them to different destinations. Then you can recover virtual machines to the original or custom locations, reducing the infrastructure downtime and ensuring data availability and production continuity.
Additional Tips to Prevent Virtualization Security Issues
Keeping up with the five recommendations above can help you maintain VM security. Still, with some other regular and simple security measures you can enhance your organization’s data protection even more. Here are four more recommendations that can help you improve any security system, including the protection of virtual machines and virtualized infrastructures.
Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication is among the must-have virtualization security solutions and data protection system elements in general. With two-factor authentication, you add a security layer to a regular login procedure. In addition to a usual password, a user logging in to a VM, server, storage, or any other node, will have to provide an authentication key from, for instance, Google Authenticator. Therefore, compromising a password won’t be enough for bad actors to access a virtual workload.
Role-Based Access
Role-based access control (RBAC) is another approach that IT industry professionals strongly recommend to enhance security. With RBAC, you can provide users with the access rights according to their job position in your organization. Therefore, malicious users trying to compromise accounts of employees won’t be able to develop their smaller breach into a devastating data disaster.
Total Encryption
Preventing third-party access to data is possible only when the data is encrypted both during transfer (in flight) and retention (at rest). This is especially important for high-value information, such as your data when investing surplus cash, which can be the target of ill intentions. In such cases, any data the organization sends outside the internal machines and networks should be encrypted. Internal traffic encryption can be an additional data protection enhancement if you are ready to spend more resources to avoid overall performance degradation.
Reliable Passwords
Strong passwords are key security measures, regardless of the rest of your cybersecurity solutions. A strong password should include eight or more symbols with numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and special characters. Another reliability metric is the meaninglessness of your password. A reliable password is the one not carrying logic or sense that a hacker can potentially guess.
Conclusion
Virtual data protection should be designed to stand against regular threats (outside and inside attacks, ransomware, malware, phishing) and virtualization-specific threats (VM sprawl, snapshot issues) with equal efficiency. To build an effective VM security system, consider segmenting networks and APIs, developing workflows to verify VM components, and isolating hosted elements. Reliable passwords, encryption in flight and at rest, two-factor authentication and RBAC can boost system protection when necessary. However, to be prepared for data emergencies and help your organization overcome security failures, you need to integrate regular backup workflows in your IT environment.
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