How to Ensure Virtual Machine Security in Cloud Computing?

Implementation of virtual machine security in cloud computing allocate strategy and prove its effectiveness.

In the cloud infrastructure, the co-resident attack is a critical security threat. Through virtualization technology provided by Cloud Service Provider, tenant's virtual machines (VMs) security in cloud computing are possible to be allocated on the same host. A multi-tenant environment provides malicious tenants an opportunity to launch the co-resident attack and steal other tenants' information through side channels. To prevent this type of attack, organizations mostly pay attention to eliminating side channels and very few of them study VM deployment strategy.

What is virtualized security?

Virtualized security, or security virtualization, refers to security solutions that are software-based and designed to work within a virtualized IT environment. This differs from traditional, hardware-based network security, which is static and runs on devices such as traditional firewalls, routers, and switches.

In contrast to hardware-based security, virtualized security is flexible and dynamic. Instead of being tied to a device, it can be deployed anywhere in the network and is often cloud-based. This is key for virtual machine security in cloud computing, in which operators spin up workloads and applications dynamically; virtualized security allows security services and functions to move around with those dynamically created workloads.

Virtual machine security in cloud computing mechanisms such as isolating multitenant environments in public cloud environments is also important to virtualized security. The flexibility of virtualized security is helpful for securing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, where data and workloads migrate around a complicated ecosystem involving multiple vendors.

What are the benefits of virtualized security?

Virtualized security is now effectively necessary to keep up with the complex security demands of a virtualized network, plus it's more flexible and efficient than traditional physical security.

Here are some of its specific benefits:

• Cost-effectiveness: Virtual machine security in cloud computing allows an enterprise to maintain a secure network without a large increase in spending on expensive proprietary hardware. Pricing for cloud-based virtualized security services is often determined by usage, which can mean additional savings for organizations that use resources efficiently.
• Flexibility: Virtualized security functions can follow workloads anywhere, which is crucial in a virtualized environment. It provides protection across multiple data centres and in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud environments, allowing an organization to take advantage of the full benefits of virtualization while also keeping data secure.
• Operational efficiency: Quicker and easier to deploy than hardware-based security, virtualized security doesn't require IT, teams, to set up and configure multiple hardware appliances. Instead, they can set up security systems through centralized software, enabling rapid scaling. Using software to run security technology also allows security tasks to be automated, freeing up additional time for IT teams.
• Regulatory compliance: Traditional hardware-based security is static and unable to keep up with the demands of a virtualized network, making virtual machine security in cloud computing, a necessity for organizations that need to maintain regulatory compliance.