Virtualization and Risk – Key Security Considerations for your Enterprise Architecture Taking a structured and systematic view of the impact of hardware virtualization on IT risk management

As virtualization technology gains a stronger foothold in IT departments, many questions are being raised: " How will this technology affect my existing security posture? " ; " What new concerns need to be addressed to mitigate this risk? " and " What elements of risk does virtualization share with physical deployments? " As you would expect, there is no one size fits all solution to security, let alone one that can be extrapolated for virtualization technology. This white paper takes a pragmatic view of the different components of virtualization technologies and provides a perspective on how enterprises that are looking to deploy such technologies should think about their threat profile. It describes the people, process, and technology concerns that should be addressed before a full-scale deployment is undertaken. And finally, it provides some food for thought about the road ahead as this technology becomes more widespread.