Virtualisation and cloud computing race ahead of security practices

The rush toward virtualisation of internal enterprise computing resources and cloud computing can have many advantages, such as server consolidation, but it's largely outracing traditional security and identity management practices. That's leaving huge gaps, a sense of chaos and questions about where security products and services should be applied in the world of multi-vendor virtual-machine (VM) hypervisors.

"Virtualisation will radically change how you secure and manage your computing environment," Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald said this week at a Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in the US. "Workloads are more mobile, and more difficult to secure. It breaks the security policies tied to physical location. We need security policies independent of network topology."

Gartner estimates almost half of x86-based server workloads are virtualised today, with VMware the clear market leader, but with Microsoft Hyper-V on the rise and Citrix a contender. Gartner advocates that enterprises plan to move to a private-cloud architecture. But at the same time, the consultancy acknowledged management tools and security really haven't risen to meet the occasion.