A survey of 300 IT, virtualisation and security specialists found that virtual machines are quickly becoming a fixture in many organisations. But while 81% of IT managers rate securing these virtual machines as “very important to critical”, only 35% of those surveyed have actually done so… [click continue reading for more on this entry]…

The survey was conducted by Shavlik Technologies at the recent VMworld 2008 conference in Las Vegas.

The survey also asked conference delegates if their IT infrastructure was subject to industry or government audits (PCI, BASEL II, SOX) and if the audits included their virtual machines.

About 61% responded that they were. Respondents were asked to rate the importance of centralising patch management for virtual and physical systems, and 99.2% rated this as “important to critical.”

When asked how they were responding to the requirement to secure virtual environments, 32.4% said that they had no security scheme in place while 37.8% were currently evaluating solutions for virtual security.

Only 34.9% were using an existing security/compliance solution. Respondents were then asked to rate the importance of centralising configuration management for virtual and physical systems, and 98.9% rated this category “important to critical.”

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