Filed under: Internet, Security
60% of virtual servers are less secure than their physical counterparts
It's all the rage at the moment: drop your cumbersome, expensive and high-maintenance physical servers and get some virtual servers! Basically, instead of managing an entire physical server -- hard disk, processors, power, etc. -- you can now buy a share of a large server. They're called VPS or VDS -- virtual private/dedicated servers -- and it turns out the majority of these new servers are not very secure.The report by Gartner (which costs $95) highlights the usual, inherent risks of moving to a new platform. VPSes, due to the new and immature software used to split a server's resources, can be insecure. It's not such a huge problem now, with only 18% of enterprise processing occurring on virtual servers, but by 2012 that will climb to over 50%. Right now, with the sheer number of unsecured physical dedicated servers, hackers are unlikely to target VPSes... but that will change!
Gartner suggests that organizations do their homework before switching to virtualized server resources -- and specifically they need to know the 'hypervisor' backwards and forwards. The hypervisor's job is to effectively split the physical server into discrete portions -- but as you can imagine, if the hypervisor is compromised, every user's data then becomes available. Such security concerns also pertain to cloud computing, though you have to assume that providers like Amazon know what they are doing.
This is just a teething issue, and I'm sure network and system administrators will get on top of things sooner rather than later.
[via Network World]
The Illusionist's Dream is a simple platformer; you play as a magician who needs to get through each level by transforming into any number of animals that you encounter along the way.
Each animal can do different things; the butterfly can obviously fly, but if it encounters a frog, the frog eats it, and you have to start over again. There's also a fox that runs fast and leaps far, but it eats any rabbits that cross its path. That means that, if you may need to be a rabbit later on, you need to take that into account ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ZeRo said 10:30AM on 3-16-2010
:) Finally something refreshing
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Rich said 11:42AM on 3-16-2010
My company has been pushing to get everything into the cloud to save some costs. I've been fighting it tooth and nail. The concept hasn't had enough time on it to warrant jumping on the bandwagon. With a small company like mine, any type of breach would pretty close us down whether they got the financials or our drawings/schematics/firmware.
I'll have to get the report and use it in the next meeting where it comes up.
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Sebastian Anthony said 1:22PM on 3-16-2010
I think you're probably OK in the cloud (though not as secure as standard well-secured dedicated servers)... it's the poorly-maintained VPSes I'd worry about.
VPSes rely on both your network admin AND your ISP/data centre knowing what they're doing... bit risky.
Jaded said 8:21PM on 3-21-2010
@Sebastian Anthony: Are you kidding? "You're probably OK in the cloud?" What is the cloud other than a bunch of virtualized servers own and managed by someone else...you're putting all of your trust in them...
I'm not against the "cloud" but you'd better know exactly what you're getting into before storing your lifeblood there. You'd better know how they are building out your servers, who is sharing them, how they are secured, and what their data recovery/migration plans are...
Jesse said 11:56AM on 3-16-2010
It's called IPSec, learn it, use it, love it!
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Sebastian Anthony said 1:18PM on 3-16-2010
With a mind like that, I hope you are an employed network admin...!
Neil said 8:16PM on 3-21-2010
You can secure the data path all you want with IPSec but if I own your server - be it virtualized or physical, I own your data...