Security, employee skills prevent IT virtualization

Bangalore: A survey by CA Technologies has found that enterprises are embracing virtualization, but security is still lagging behind as managers don't implement security strategies to protect the hypervisor. The research also found that about a fifth of the companies in the survey said their IT staff does not have the skills or funds to implement security in a virtual environment.Just 55 percent, of those organizations cited budgetary restraints and the "upfront cost" of implementation, and 53 percent named the "complexity of managing security across virtual environments and platforms." Business and IT executives across 15 countries reported serious security concerns about data sprawl, hypervisor privilege, and other privacy and compliance issues in their virtual environment.

Even though the majority of the business and IT leaders said virtualization would help improve IT operational efficiency, security remains a concern, with 39 percent saying virtual environments are more difficult to secure than physical environments. Almost 85 percent of the organizations said "cloud privacy and compliance issues" and "cloud security issues" inhibit plans to move from virtual environments to a private cloud.

While over 84 percent of the surveyed managers prefer integrated products that seamlessly secure physical and virtual environments, just over half, or 56 percent, actually have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, such systems.

Despite all the interest around virtualization, it is not yet the standard for production environments. Only 34 percent of the participating companies have deployed server virtualization for more than 50 percent of their systems. The companies have rolled out even less for other types of virtualization, such as storage, application and desktop, the researchers said. For example, only 8 percent of the organizations in the report have desktop virtualization for more than 50 percent of the enterprise.

Only 65 percent of the business managers enforced a separation of duties for administrative tasks across virtual platforms, the report said. More than 40 percent of the surveyed executives claimed to not use automation tools for access certification, privileged user management or log management, according to the study. In fact, only 42 percent perform regular access certifications for privileged users or are able to adequately monitor and log privileged access, researchers found.