Jim Waggoner, director of product management at Symantec, says the three primary virtual-machine software providers, VMware, Citrix Xen and Microsoft, are each still working on new approaches to security in a virtual-machine environment that aren't yet out and available.

"We're in partnerships with all three of them," says Waggoner, noting the goal is to find ways for security applications running on virtual machines to use less CPU since users are already grappling with performance issues. "There's the expectation that security won't have an additional effect on the application," he says.

While he hasn't seen huge skepticism about security in virtualization, Waggoner says he has encountered IT staff at companies who believe that once servers or desktops are virtualized, they "don't need any malware protection at all," a stance he would argue against.

In the Ponemon survey, the 825 individuals in IT operations and 577 information security professionals who answered questions about virtualization were in general agreement that the most significant security risk associated with virtualization was the inability to properly identify and authenticate users to multiple systems.

© 2007 Network World Inc.