What do vendors say about Virtualization and security?

VMShield. Another vendor in the VM security space is Catbird, which launched VMShield in February to secure VMs from human management errors and threats from the network.

"Some hacker in Uzbekistan is not the big problem in the virtual world; the problem is management change," said Tamar Newberger, Catbird's VP of marketing. "With VMware, one person has all access to the virtual environment, instead of the four people it takes to configure a physical server. Human error is the biggest risk."

Catbird software can halt communications that do not comply with security policies, preventing security threats due to human error. The product includes change control and secondary control validation; automatic quarantine of unauthorized VMs; server sprawl management; and network data protection against vulnerabilities, known attack signatures and VM-to-VM attacks.

VMware and XenServer are monitored, and when customers request Hyper-V security, CatBird will provide it, Newberger said.

The software costs $US3,250 per ESX host plus a 20% subscription fee per year, or users can opt to pay $US18 per month, per VM, Newberger said.

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