Davey Winder
Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:47
Your IT -
Home IT
Do you operate a business? Do you know if your staff are running virtual desktops? Congratulations, and welcome to the minority...
A
recent survey revealed
that in the UK alone, 38 percent of businesses had already adopted
virtualised infrastructures, and of those left some 52 percent were
planning to do so.
Figures that should come as no great surprise
when you have the likes of Microsoft encouraging you to 'Get Virtual
Now' by providing a copy of
Hyper-V Server 2008 absolutely free.
But beware, this growing popularity of virtualisation and the ease with
which the tools to enable it can be downloaded and installed, brings
with it the danger of end-users being able to create virtual
environments to run unauthorised applications such as games and beta
software.
Unfortunately, all too often and especially when IT budgets are being
constrained and IT admin resources stretched, management of virtual
desktops does not get given the priority within an organisation that it
demands.
Indeed, a recent poll by security specialists Sophos suggests that more
than half of all businesses do not know how many employees are running
virtualisation software on their computers. A potentially huge problem,
given that unmanaged virtual environments can open up a gaping hole in
corporate security systems.
Richard Jacobs, chief technology officer at Sophos says "Virtualisation
tools represent a black hole in many organisations' IT security"
warning that if staff create hidden virtual desktops then "it's
impossible to defend them against cyber attacks."
So while staff might just be trying to circumvent the ban on social
networking in the workplace for example, they are actually opening up
the door to corporate identity theft, data loss and brand damage.
The solution involves all the usual suspects: acceptable use policy
education,
virtual environment management and
perhaps above all else an understanding of the very real dangers a
virtual desktop can hold.