Virtual components and environments present a particular challenge when we talk about corporate cyber security. Here are the five trends I believe will define the field of virtualization in 2017:
1. Virtualization security is focusing on integration
Considering security solutions for VDI and virtualized servers, I predict that enterprises will pay more attention to the smooth integration between various systems instead of the thorough examination of product features under a microscope.
Security solutions that can be integrated into the virtualization infrastructure at a sufficient level to detect cyber-attacks in their early stages, as well as those that deliver malicious activity information to the components of the corporate environment to make quick decisions that isolate and analyze the threat, will be those that businesses opt for in 2017.
2. Corporations to invest more in hybrid cloud protection
An emerging trend that will definitely gain more importance in the next five years is the transition from private to hybrid clouds. By 2020, the growth of public cloud infrastructure, and the resulting costs of the infrastructure and security solutions for it, are likely to increase by 2.5 to 3 times, compared to what the industry analysts demonstrated this year. Major cloud providers, such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google continue to lead, strengthening their positions and stretching out far ahead of competitors.
3. More attacks and more damage
The number of attacks on corporate players will continue to grow. It is not only that global companies use or do not use virtualization (at the moment more than 75% of businesses have been virtualized), but the question is whether they are able to watch all the processes occurring in the infrastructure with regard to the information security.
Because of the complexity of large corporate infrastructures and complicated relationships among different systems within it, attack detection time will increase, along with the damage.
4. Ransomware continues impact on VDI
Speaking about the growing importance of particular threats, it is worth mentioning ransomware because Crypto-locker and Crypto-malware threats will become a headache for virtualized desktops. Ransomware can hit a virtual desktop as well as a physical workstation, but when it comes to VDI, the risks are significantly higher.
5. Mobility challenges call for unified security
The larger the enterprise, the more control it needs to achieve in order to make sure everything is safe and secure in how users interact with different business systems. Considering the fact that users are becoming more and more mobile and require seamless access to business services and applications from wherever they are, many corporations will find themselves implementing enterprise mobility management software for thousands of endpoints. This will require powerful yet resource-efficient security solutions to be tightly integrated with those enterprise mobility systems.
Vitaly Mzokov is solution business lead for Data Center & Virtualisation Security at Kaspersky Lab