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10 Jul 2008

Podcast: Is virtualization a black hole in your security?

Sophos CTO discusses the security concerns around virtualization

Richard Jacobs
Sophos CTO Richard Jacobs discusses virtualization security in the podcast.

IT security and control firm Sophos today announced that it has published a new podcast discussing the security concerns around virtualization.

In the podcast, Sophos's CTO Richard Jacobs is interviewed about virtualization, discussing the motivation behind why organizations use virtual software on their corporate network and what security risks arise from running many virtual machines on one computer.

"With tightened IT budgets, administrators are looking to more efficient methods of using existing resources, and running multiple systems on one piece of hardware certainly offers a valuable solution," said Carole Theriault, host of the Sophos podcasts. "But many organizations are failing to recognize the security risk posed by unmanaged virtual machines."

It has now become relatively simple for IT-savvy employees to download virtualization software and run this on the corporate network, masked from the administrator. These 'black holes' in the organization's security can open the network up to a plethora of attacks.

"Virtual machines need to be treated as standalone machines - security solutions running on the physical machine won't protect the virtual environment," continued Theriault. "In the podcast, Richard advises administrators how they can continue to run secure virtual environments, while controlling the use of unauthorized virtual machines."

All Sophos podcasts are available for download at www.sophos.com/podcasts. Past podcasts have covered topics such as corporate security policies, rootkits, protecting educational establishments, and the latest trends in viruses and spam.

About Sophos

More than 100 million users in 150 countries rely on Sophos as the best protection against complex threats and data loss. Sophos is committed to providing complete security solutions that are simple to deploy, manage, and use and that deliver the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. Sophos offers award-winning encryption, endpoint security, web, email, mobile and network security solutions backed by SophosLabs - a global network of threat intelligence centers.

Sophos is headquartered in Boston, US and Oxford, UK. More information is available at www.sophos.com.