Is old-school physical security really 'good enough' for virtualization?

Whatever happened to virtualization security?

Back in the day, everyone was talking about blue pills and red pills, about sideways attacks and DOM-0 threats, about security profiles and isolation policies, about perimeter defense and security embedded in the hypervisor.

Then, all of a sudden, the buzz seemed to disappear. It really seems like organizations simply don’t have the time, money, desire, or otherwise to pursue dedicated virtualization security.

Indeed, it seems like most of the pure-play virtualization security vendors have folded, been sold, or reworked their strategy.

For example:

• Blue Lane ended up being sold to VMware, reputedly at a bargain price, after failing to get any traction.
• Third Brigade was rolled up into Trend Micro, and now offers a solution for combined ‘physical, virtual and cloud’ protection.
• Reflex and Catbird have repositioned to highlight their value in configuration, compliance, and/or systems management (in addition to their security value).
• Tripwire and Configuresoft have long promoted some virtualization security values, but were never really pure-play virtualization security vendors.
• Even security specialists like Symantec and RSA do not push virtualization security products, preferring mainly to build on existing security paradigms to support virtualization.

Of course VMware still has vShield Zones and the VMsafe API, but of the ISVs it seems that only Altor Networks still plays strongly in the pure-play virtualization security space.

This barely sustaining demand for pure-play virtualization security was reinforced last week in new research from Prism Microsystems (PDF), a software vendor in the SIEM market* (which I learned about in eWeek via @JSchroed). Possible vendor/sample bias aside, this research showed quite starkly how many respondents are securing their virtual environment using traditional (or no) security, and how few are using virtualization-specific security:

Source: Prism Microsystems, ‘2010 State of Virtualization Security Survey’, April 2010

In confirmation of this ennui, Gartner recently predicted at least a 5 year maturity cycle for virtualization security.

All of this is especially perplexing, because there is no doubt virtualization security is still top-of-mind for some very smart and dedicated people. The Prism Microsystems research, for example, says that 86% of its respondents acknowledge that securing virtualization is as important as securing their physical environment.

So I am unclear as to what is causing this lack of market interest. Perhaps CIOs (and/or CISOs):

• saw virtualization security as unnecessary insurance against threats that have never played out ‘in the wild’
• rated the potential financial impact of any additional risks as low enough that they can simply accept them
• believe that vShield Zones and VMsafe are all that is needed (but what about Hyper-V, Xen, etc.?)
• decided instead to invest in management disciplines with more straightforward ROI (virtualization, automation, configuration management, asset management, etc.)
• have simply been unable to justify virtualization security purchases during the economic downturn

Whatever the reason, it really does focus the question: does virtualization security really matter?

In my opinion, it absolutely does. Yet, it seems to me that decision makers are saying that standalone virtualization security is more important theoretically, from a technology and business perspective, than it is in practice. Most enterprise buyers – for better or worse – apparently believe that their existing security paradigns are at least ‘good enough’. They definitely appear instead to be taking classic intrusion detection, data loss prevention, identity & access, and other entrenched security management disciplines, and adapting them to the new technologies of virtualization (and probably cloud as well).

All of which actually does make sense. Without any major virtualization-specific exploits in evidence, perhaps they are right. While it may be valid to take the view that  it is only a matter of time until they are proven wrong, perhaps extending traditional security capabilities into the virtual world is indeed a good approach, at least for now.Perhaps CISOs are actually ahead of the game, integrating management across virtual and physical domains even while their systems and operations counterparts are maintaining virtualization as a silo.

Regardless of whether it is the right approach or not, one thing is apparent – the heat is off the pure-play virtualization security market, at least for now. As CIOs and CISOs focus on applying traditional physical security paradigms on their virtual environments, a different breed of cross-domain, integrated, and extensible tools are proving superior value – at least for now.

A few days ago I was pleased to brief again with Reflex Systems. Apart from the fact that they are doing some very cool things with virtualization management, their approach struck me as, if not unique, at least pleasantly rare.

Good for them!

What I liked most was that they are trying to break down the barriers between systems and security management. Certainly this is something that I discuss regularly with enterprises – the need to stop focusing on silo-based management, and perhaps even more importantly, to stop pandering to silo-focused low-level managers. Almost all of the CIOs, VPs, and IT Directors who I talk with are critically aware of the problems these silos cause – including human errors, resource inefficiencies, security problems, and higher costs.

This is also a constant discussion I have within EMA, especially with the lead of our security practice, Scott Crawford – a brilliant mind on security (amongst many other subjects) who constantly thinks about security in ways I never could or would. We work and publish together on this topic frequently. Indeed, it has come up again in our latest research, which shows that security and risk management are a fundamental requirement for cloud computing – or what EMA calls the ‘Responsible Cloud’.

The upshot of all these conversations is simple – security management and systems management are not, cannot, and should not be completely separate. Not in human terms, not in processes, and not in technologies. Without doubt, anyone in a large enterprise who has ever tried to implement a patch, a configuration change, a firewall update, a software release, or a hundred other data center changes will attest to this in a heartbeat.

Of course (as Scott rightly pointed out when I last spoke with him about this), we will always need security experts, and systems experts – the two disciplines are not the same, and we will always need deep domain expertise in each. So I am not advocating complete convergence. But we need more software tools that provide integration and interoperability that allow these professional to work more effectively together.

While multi-function vendors like CA, Symantec, IBM, and others have the product portfolio to approach these cross-silo problems holistically, there are few ‘best of breed’ vendors thinking this way. Of course, Tripwire and the ever-inspiring Gene Kim (who I have sadly never met) spring to mind for me; so would Configuresoft (although now as part of EMC Ionix, hardly a niche vendor), and the indefatigable Dennis Moreau. Both inspire their teams, technologies, and customers by championing a fundamental understanding that systems and security cannot, at their heart, be completely separated.

(As an aside, these two seem like they would have been incredibly compelling arch-enemies in some ubergeek superhero genre – although I would never want to choose which should be the hero and which the villain!)

I must say that, so far at least, I don’t know the product design team from Reflex personally – guys like Hezi Moore, Aaron Bawcom, and Mike Wronski – as well as I do Dennis or Gene. However, I do know that they all have very credible security chops. Plus, one thing is clear to me.

They get it. They really get it.

And that in itself is a thing of rare beauty.

Deliberately designing functionality that addresses both security and systems management – like functional isolation, integrated access control, change segregation, granular audit trails, policy based management, and role-based access – into a systems management toolset is a rare feat, especially in startup and niche products. It is something I look for all the time, because my enterprise clients often demand it. Sadly, all too often I fail to find it – and I am not even a real security wonk! When I do, I am pleasantly surprised. When I see deep thought going into the security value of a systems management product, I am almost ecstatic.

Unfortunately, the challenge for vendors like Reflex and Tripwire (as it was for Configuresoft, and perhaps is still for EMC, Symantec, etc.) is to find customers that value this synergy. While most high-level IT execs understand this imperative, their holistic view frequently does not translate to many of their lower-level managers, or to many functional IT practitioners.

Of course, there are plenty of departmental ops managers and security managers who do get it. They strive to connect their teams with other groups, driving greater business efficiency and effectiveness as a result. However, unfortunately, many do not, instead focusing on protecting their small empires, walling themselves off from integrated management and cross-functional resourcing.

Similarly, many positive-minded individual technicians will actively seek out cross-skilling opportunities, recognizing that it makes them not just more useful but also more valuable, and more indispensable. However, many practitioners (both security and ops) can be just as bad as the most myopic managers (who they often work for), dogmatically eschewing integrated management tools and processes, seeing them as threats to their own personal domains of control.

Sad but true, best practices like breaking down IT management silos are not always adopted.

Fortunately, vendors like Reflex and Tripwire that have expertise and passion in both ops and security (and – shameless plug – trusted advisors like EMA, which is big enough to have experts in both disciplines, yet small enough that we still work together), are trying to break down these barriers.

And more power to them. They serve their clients much better by promoting the undeniable facts that security values are critical to systems management, and systems management is critical to security.