5 Essential VMware Security Best Practices of 2022

Are you using VMware today or moving to Hosted VMware and unsure what security best practices you want to follow?

VMware is a robust virtualization platform that will help increase your managed service business’s bottom line. With VMware, you may simplify and reduce the associated fee of deploying and managing the applications in your servers. 

When clients need infrastructure and applications like enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and data appliances, VMware provides best-in-class environments without compromising performance or security. Your clients can receive higher performance, higher support, and an overall technology experience in case your managed service provider (MSP) is leveraging the advantages of VMware on their behalf.

VMware’s security measures, mature technology, and ease of use make it a staple for MSPs seeking to protect their clients’ workloads from various kinds of attacks.

VMware provides security for all its workloads and has many layers of protection. Essentially the most basic level of protection starts on the hypervisor level and spans to the virtual machine (VM) layer. 

VMware virtual machines are also compatible with several external and third-party security services. For instance, popular tools like Microsoft’s Energetic Directory are compatible with VMware. As well as, disk-level encryption technology like BitLocker will also be utilized with VMware. 

Essentially the most common attack on virtual machines is VM escape, where malware gets between the hardware, hypervisor, and guest operating system to destroy data. VMware mitigates this risk by constructing in protections corresponding to isolation through segregating your networks or running your environment in a unique location than your production network, so attacks won’t have the option to cross the boundaries.

VMware is also a pacesetter in reducing the chance of DDoS attacks by integrating security directly into its products so you may implement it quickly without having to integrate third-party products or applications yourself. 

Configuring VMware along with your firewall will help provide additional protection from being breached and permit for management through one console fairly than through multiple products.

Nonetheless, as with all recent technology, there are risks to concentrate on. Despite being enterprise-grade software available to businesses of all sizes, VMware needs proper care and support for you and your clients to acknowledge essentially the most significant advantages. 

One such place where extra attention is needed? Security. As with all applications and infrastructure, security is of paramount importance.

The excellent news is that VMware doesn’t must be complicated or difficult to secure. Along with the native security explained above, some straightforward best practices will help lock down your VMware workloads. 

This post will discuss five security best practices for VMware workloads – including what they’re and the best way to secure them.

The primary security best practice is to make sure that your VMware infrastructure has an antivirus solution in place. While it could appear counterintuitive to have each an antivirus and a virtualization platform, the fact is that there are security risks with either option alone. By utilizing each options together, you may bolster defenses against malware attacks inside your environment.

To guard against malware which will already be in your virtual machines, you must run the most recent version of an antivirus solution in each VM. Unfortunately, many individuals don’t realize that virtual machines operate aside from the core OS. That is the point of virtualization, in any case. 

Would-be hackers and data thieves may try to contaminate the underlying hardware or the VMware virtual machines. Due to this fact, deploying antivirus software in each places is solely the perfect practice to follow and might provide robust VMware security protection.

Understand what’s running inside your VMware infrastructure and take steps for shielding data at rest. This could include encrypting hard drives or every other place where unencrypted sensitive information could be stored. 

While protecting data at rest is a commonly known best practice in IT security, it may get somewhat confusing to grasp and separate those protections in individual virtual machines versus addressing hard drives and infrastructure as a complete. 

Take great care to locate where data resides, virtual or otherwise, and take needed precautions to guard it at rest.

It is best to check that your VMware security is up-to-date and running with the most recent patches installed. The labor you do to supply security to your clients may be undone straight away if a zero-day vulnerability in a VM stays unprotected.

By virtue of using such a well-liked and robust system like VMware, you might be increasing your clients’ risk profile. VMware is a well-liked goal of hackers. There will probably be attempts to use any vulnerability detected in VMware. 

The most effective technique to address these core vulnerabilities is to take VMware’s guidance on what patches to make use of and when to make use of them.

Often back up critical data in case of corruption or disaster recovery purposes. Regular backups – stored in a unique location, after all – are highly advisable for any application or data store. That definitely applies to VMware deployments and workloads as well.

In technology, unexpected negative things occur often. Someone trips over an influence cable at the information center. A motherboard melts down. A corrupt file or application spins uncontrolled. 

Having an entire backup of an environment can turn an interruption event into a nasty day as an alternative of an extinction event. The bottom line is proper VMware support and an entire and uncorrupted backup.

VMware is a robust platform that will help your MSP grow its business and supply higher customer support. To properly secure VMware workloads, you’ll have to have an antivirus solution in place on each virtual machine, in addition to keep security patches up-to-date across the whole infrastructure. Moreover, you will need to encrypt any sensitive data at rest and often back up your virtual machines. By following these best practices, together with the opposite resources on this blog post, you may keep VMware workloads secure from security threats.

Still undecided how VMware matches into the offerings of your MSP? Desperate to learn more about how VMware will help your clients achieve an excellent greater return on their investment along with your firm? Connect with certainly one of the Most Helpful Humans in Hosting and get essentially the most out of VMware.