Three kinds of virtualization security problems in data center and its countermeasures

"Tenkine Server channel August 19 message" Consolidation of resources, cost control, dynamic configuration, and dynamic migration are driving most IT departments to experiment with some form of virtualization platform and drive virtualization technology to the data center. The massive infrastructure driven by emerging technology trends such as cloud computing makes virtualization technology a prerequisite for cloud data centers.

However, virtualization platforms are facing security issues, and the virtualization platform adds an additional layer of security requirements. Virtual machine migration to data centers requires a redesign of security plans and schemas, and potential problems that may arise include incident response, virtualization infrastructure, quarantine design.

In fact, the risks associated with the virtual platform itself remain unclear, as there are currently no large solutions for internal management programs and platform security. While the management process is the most difficult part of the data center from a tactical perspective, a management program is strategically the most tempting target for a virtual data center because it allows access to multiple virtual systems in the data center.

Enterprises should analyze the specific risks of the virtual platform they use. It is important to know how the architecture changes affect existing security management systems. Enterprise IT departments should also develop tactical and strategic security plans before migrating or applying virtual machines to virtual machines. These security plans are implemented through a comprehensive analysis of existing virtual security, as well as plans to address future security threats to the virtual platform. Planning and small changes in current architecture and security management can help protect against future hypervisor and platform-level virtualization attacks.

To address the security implications of introducing virtualization into data centers, we need to address three types of virtualization security issues: When new virtualization technologies are introduced, data centers add new security risks, such as the risk of running multiple virtual machines in one Management program; virtual machine mirroring and customer operating system security; A virtual instance of a physical security device, for example, from a physical firewall and an intrusion prevention system into a virtual mirror running the same service.

To sum up, as part of the entire virtualization security architecture, IT organizations should focus on three virtualization aspects: separating virtual machines by location, separating virtual machines by service type, and implementing predictable security management throughout the virtual machine lifecycle.

One of the most frequently discussed issues in the field of virtual security is the use of virtualization platforms in quarantine. Often see a physical host running public and proprietary virtual machines in the quarantine area. In practice, this architecture is not as secure as the architecture of the physical environment, as the virtual machines and physical machines share the runtime environment. Everything on the virtual platform is shared and managed by the same software. In theory, this shared virtual architecture provides a direct attack from a public network to a proprietary network machine.

The solution to eliminate the security threat of shared quarantine resources is to physically separate the public virtual machines from the dedicated virtual machines and run and manage them on different hosts. All exposed virtual machines should be placed on the exposed host server. For enterprises that use VMware's vcenter technology to implement virtualization on a large scale, it is also important to separate public resources from dedicated resource clusters (many groups of hosts are composed of a single management pool based on resources). For example, VMware's DRS software enables dynamic migration of virtual machines between hosts in a cluster. If a common and proprietary host is shared in a cluster, a DRS event can migrate a dedicated virtual machine to a public host server based on the requirements of the resource, eliminating the benefit of any resource differentiation.

Once the virtual resources are separated by location, the next step is to separate the virtual machines according to the tasks or services. In other words, let the entire server virtual machine in a resource pool and cluster, so that all the application virtual machines in another resource pool or cluster. This architecture is designed to limit the risks associated with virtualization platforms, as is the case with separate locations within the quarantine zone. If an attacker can break a client virtual machine, other clients running on the same physical host are expected to be compromised as they share the same operating environment. The threat to business is huge.

On the other hand, if a host server is running on all application tiers (these include application servers and database servers), an attacker can gain access to the backend database by exploiting a front-end Web browser vulnerability. The result is that the application server will also face significant security threats. Separating virtual machines from services helps mitigate this risk by isolating virtual applications and keeping the virtual machines in touch with specific hardware resources and clusters.

One of the main benefits of virtual machines and platforms is the ability to easily create, move, and revoke virtual machines. When new services are needed, you can create virtual machines or extract the archived virtual machines, and then set them up as needed. As demand grows, people can clone virtual machines or dynamically allocate additional resources to virtual machines. As demand decreases, people can undo the settings of these virtual machines so that they no longer consume resources. The process of creating, moving, and destroying virtual machines forms the life cycle of the virtual machine.

Virtual machines are vulnerable to security threats at every step of the lifecycle. When creating a new virtual machine from scratch, it is important to ensure that the virtual machine uses the latest security patches and software. When cloning virtual machines to mirror and move virtual machines, it is important to maintain the stability of each virtual machine to see if these virtual machines need to use the latest patches or if patches are needed.

Over time, it is easy to clone a virtual machine image that uses patches, and ultimately to maintain a variety of patch levels for all kinds of virtual machines. Because mirrored storage is not used for a long time, these virtual machines may become obsolete, requiring that patches be used offline during the intermittent time used to ensure that they are as secure as possible at the next startup. Like migrated virtual machines, asset management is important for destroying virtual machines and preventing unused virtual machines from being spread out in the data center as an unknown threat.

In short, the virtualization technology in the data center with the convenience of operation, while the security issues arise. In the coexistence environment of virtual machine and physical machine, data center operation and maintenance face new challenge. How to realize the efficient operation of the data center under the virtualization becomes a new task for the managers of the data center.