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Trend Micro Enterprise Security
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Changing the Game for Anti-Virus in the Virtual Datacenter

A Trend Micro White Paper | September 2010

CHANGING THE GAME FOR ANTIVIRUS IN THE VIRTUAL DATACENTER

I.

INTRODUCTION
From its early experimental applications in the 1960s and 1970s, virtualization was first seriously implemented as a way to control ITcapital and operational expenditures through server consolidation. Then in 2005, when Intel and AMD introduced chipsets to specifically support virtual hardware, virtual environments started expanding into line-of-business applications, where they continue to deliver cost efficiency in IT production through resource consolidation. Reducing the cost of IT consistently surfaces in the top 3 list ofconcerns to CIOs today and as validated by analyst firm, Gartner, virtualization is one of the key enablers to reducing technology costs. [1] With the cost-savings of virtualization widely validated, the focus has turned more to quality of service in virtualization efforts, with targets for service level agreements, speed and stability. However, as enterprises rush to embrace the benefits ofvirtualization, they have also rushed to implement traditionally architected security solutions in virtualized environments. Unfortunately, while this approach is familiar to enterprises, it results in undesirable consequences. At minimum, this approach increases complexity and impacts performance. At its worst, this approach creates new security risks and diminishes the cost efficiencies of serverconsolidation. This white paper reviews the challenges with endpoint security in virtualized environments - including the inherent risks of dynamic virtual machines and the resource impact of security software such as virusscanners in multiple guest virtual machines, on a single physical host. [2] To address these challenges, a new standard for virtual datacenter security is presented; one thatcombines proven threat protection technology with an innovative architecture for anti-virus protection in virtualized environments.

“Having about 90% of our
environment now virtualized has significantly reduced our costs and greatly enhanced our disaster recovery capability.”
Gary Whatley, CIO, Corporate Express, based on interview with Gartner January 2009

II.

SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THEVIRTUAL DATACENTER
Securing the journey to virtualization is complicated by two factors – (1) risks that are present in the physical datacenter, and (2) those that are unique to virtualized environments. The leaders in enterprise security and virtualization – Trend Micro and VMware®, respectively – have joined forces to articulate these challenges and to collaborate in specific areas to helpcustomers address them. These challenges directly impact the ability of enterprise virtualization efforts in their movement from cost-efficiency to quality of services and ultimately, to business agility. It is this last stage where IT can truly be delivered as a service – or via a cloud – and business can request these services on-demand.

1 White Paper | Trend Micro Enterprise Security

CHANGINGTHE GAME FOR ANTIVIRUS IN THE VIRTUAL DATACENTER

Figure 1: Security challenges along the virtualization journey

Legacy
 Approach
 in
 the
 Virtual
 Datacenter
 
As enterprises move into the business production stage of virtualization, security concerns emerge and suddenly the idea of massive consolidation of physical hosts causes panic rather than elation. To address risksto guest virtual machines, security-minded enterprises have deployed existing endpoint security solutions to every guest virtual machine in their virtualized environments. This has resulted in a de facto ‘standard’ for how anti-virus is handled in the virtual datacenter. • Physical vs. Virtual: But inherent differences in physical and virtual architectures must be considered. For example, each...