Best Practices for keeping your virtualization platform secure

We live in an era of technological advancement where new innovative tools and techniques are created on daily basis. We are generating terabytes of data on average. To cater the ever-growing data center needs and storage requirements, new technologies such as virtualization and hyperconvergence are readily being adopted by organizations all around the world. But with all these new virtual systems, the security concerns in the IT sector have also evolved.

Data is an extremely important asset in this age and its security is of paramount importance for an organization no matter what its size. Hackers, malicious users, and attackers are constantly improving their attacking strategies and studying their targets in order to do the maximum amount of damage. A research company, Juniper Research, has recently published a study in which they have estimated the cost of data breaches and the figure estimated, by the year 2019, is an eye-popping $2.1 trillion.

Security has become a big concern over the years for virtual and physical environments of data centers. Management is constantly looking for ways to protect their data from harm and new types of threats. The cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated with their techniques which are some of the reasons why organizations need to be vigilant about their data center and cloud environment’s security. In today’s post, we will discuss the best practices that can be applied in your organization for a secure setting. So, without any more delay, let us start:

1. Intuitive management: Data centers have been revolutionized thanks to cloud computing and virtualization. It is now extremely easy to expand your data center with these modern technologies which is why scalability of the security is also a must-have. Companies should utilize security management consoles that are intuitive, scalable and able to handle multiple virtualization points. This management console will allow complete visibility of the virtual layer along with the use of associated resources. Access monitoring, user role-based access, and permissions should be employed as well.

2. Efficiency: One common myth of the IT industry is considering security as an additional overhead. A data center with a seamlessly integrated security platform can be made a reality by improving the resource utilization and hypervisor layer’s integration. The result will be an efficient security system that will protect your data center with solid user permissions and policies.

3. Scalability: Scalability is critical when it comes to modern data centers because virtual environments and cloud can be located in multiple locations. The location of your instances, whether public, private or in hybrid cloud, should not be a problem for your security system. It should be multi-tenant friendly.

4. Proactive Response: In the world of cybercrimes, your response should be proactive which means that threats should be detected before they reach your data center or virtual machines. Automation and security intelligence can help administrators create and deploy policies and methodologies that can cater to your security need proactively and with agility.

5. Compliance and Regulation: Compliance and regulations can be a huge challenge for organizations when it comes to the cloud or virtualized infrastructures. There are security platforms available in the market that are compliance ready and come with a myriad of features such as firewalls, monitoring, and intrusion detection systems, etc.

Conclusion

So, these were some of the best practices that can help you in keeping your virtual and cloud environments secure. Data center administrators should keep up with the latest technologies in order to stay one step ahead of those who pose a threat. If you are looking for switching to a virtual environment then you should give Virtual SAN a look. VSAN is an economical solution that is high in performance and provides minimum possible downtime. It is a reliable solution perfect for those companies who want to get rid of vendor lock-in or those who have budget constraints as it uses off the shelf commercial grade hardware.

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