The promise of a leaner, more efficient data center that provides businesses with more computing power for less money has all types of organizations clamoring to virtualize their data center.

But in the rush to virtualize, many companies have forgotten the painful and expensive lessons learned from introducing risk into the physical environment. Virtualization software makes it easier than ever for IT personnel to deploy and manage new servers and other infrastructure components. However, these same beneficial capabilities of virtualization also permit risk to be rapidly introduced into the enterprise.

To minimize exposure to risk, virtual machines must be afforded the same protection from internal and external attacks as physical machines. They must also be protected from inadvertent error, an issue exacerbated by the easy deployment of machines characteristic of virtual environments.