Battle looms over securing virtualised systems

security simply do not work well in virtualised environments for which they were never designed, says ComputerWorld.

These traditional approaches are the firewall and intrusion-prevention appliances, the host-based antivirus software.

With virtualisation becoming the foundation for corporate users and cloud service providers, many security vendors, including Check Point, McAfee, Trend Micro and Symantec, are adapting their products to maximise performance for the main virtualisation platforms from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix.

According to NetworkWorld, VMware, as the market leader, carries a lot of clout, and the security architecture now proposed by VMware, called vShield, could radically transform how security services will be delivered in the VMware vSphere environment.

But despite its advantages, some analysts are warning vSphere carries risk. VMware is ahead of Microsoft and Citrix in putting forward a security architecture aimed at maximising functionality and performance for its virtual machine platform, says Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald.

But unlike Citrix, which is pursuing something similar with a more open-source approach under the XenAcess initiative, he says VMware's strategy is totally proprietary and carries the risk of vendor lock-in.