Virtualization Security Risks – Government Agencies Worrying Less
Worries about the security risks of virtualization – the number two barrier to adoption for Federal IT organizations last year – have fallen to seventh place, far behind more mundane concerns such as lack of staff and budget. According to a survey conducted by CDW Government LLC, state and local IT groups ranked even lower, in eighth place.
Seventy-seven percent of government agencies are now implementing at least one form of virtualization, the report states, and 33 percent employ a “virtualization first” strategy, meaning that a requestor must prove that a new software application does not work in a virtualized environment before the agency will buy a dedicated server to support it.
Security in virtualized environments and clouds has been a major source of concern among many IT professionals, in part because such environments cannot be easily protected by conventional defenses. These concerns are now abating.
“Security is a critical consideration with any change to agency IT environments, and rightly so,” said Andy Lausch, vice president of Federal sales for CDW Government. “As agencies grow their virtualization expertise, many are finding that security is actually improved with virtualization. A centralized IT environment means managers have fewer machines to monitor and manage, which can improve the agency’s overall security posture.”