Security

Security is one of enterprise IT's most critical challenges. Stolen laptops and malicious attacks are now commonplace. Last year over 750,000 laptops were lost or stolen in the U.S. alone. Securing corporate laptops and desktops against viruses, breaches, and theft takes tremendous IT resources, not to mention the immeasurable damage that data loss alone can bring to enterprises and their customers.

"Virtualization is a technology that will change the way enterprises handle their IT environments. From storage, to systems, to applications, to desktops, it promises to make business more agile, more secure, more efficient, more available, and more productive. It is hard to underestimate how important it will be."

— Andi Mann, Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates

Virtualization can help make corporate data and applications much more secure. By isolating elements, it helps ensure that viruses and other problems with one VM or one virtualized application, for example, don't affect any other parts of the infrastructure. Separating OS's from hardware, and applications from OS's, also helps keep systems pristine and lowers the risk of infection.

Virtualization can also streamline and speed security patching, since it only needs to take place at the source, not on hundreds or thousands of individual devices. This not only reduces labor needed for desktop maintenance, it also ensures that any security vulnerabilities are corrected immediately and comprehensively.

Because of security or confidentiality concerns, IT may want data to reside in a central location rather than being distributed across a constellation of desktop PCs. A virtualized presentation configuration places all data storage and processing in a central location, with the desktop being simply a presentation of the user interface.

To maximize security of your virtualized infrastructure, you need to ensure that your security processes and tools are appropriate. For instance, the VMs must be located correctly (such as behind the firewall), and critical or vulnerable workloads – such as those accessed by customers and partners in a perimeter network – should be isolated to help contain any security risks. We also recommend spreading mission-critical workloads over multiple VMs to distribute risk and avoid interruptions.

Microsoft Virtualization Solutions Help Secure IT

To help you isolate computing layers and, thereby, minimize the chance of widespread virus infections, you can use Microsoft Virtual Server, Terminal Services and Microsoft Virtual PC. Terminal Services also allows you to centralize the location of sensitive data, minimizing the possibility of it being leaked from end user PCs. To help secure the operating system, consider using Microsoft's Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop. It provides the flexibility customers require to provision sandboxed and secure virtual machines running Windows desktop VMs on a server, accessed either by desktop PCs or thin clients.