What is VMinformer.
VMinformer is a security auditing solution for virtual environments.
What does VMinformer do?
VMinformer audits your virtual environment using a set of security benchmarks in the form of a policy that can be customised to suit your unique business requirements. You then get a report scorecard that shows you how well or badly you are performing against these benchmarks with re-mediation guidance provided on how to fix any problems. The solution is provided with out of the box policy templates based on industry best practices such as ISO 27001, CIS benchmarks, DISA STIG.
Why do I need this?
If you are taking security seriously then you need to have a handle on what is going on in your infrastructure
You say I may be vulnerable.... Vulnerable to what?
- Misconfiguration
- Not applying security patches
- Bad Network design, connecting DMZ VM’s to internal networks.
- Weak management layers, leaving ports open that you shouldn’t or exposing them to external networks
- Storage separation, allowing Production VM’s to share the same underlying storage space as development VM’s leading to potential data leakage
I have already invested in a lot of security products, why do I need VMinformer?
Those products are monolithic and do not scale and although may well run in a virtual environment they do not provide the same level of visibility that vminformer provides as vminformer was written from the ground up to primarily work with virtual environments.
Do I need something different to Audit my Virtualised network?
No. Traditional auditing tools treat virtual environments as though they were physical and therefore are not auditing the correct data. VMinformer has been written to work directly with the various virtualisation infrastructure layers from management, network and the virtual machines.
What Virtualised OS does VMinformer work with?
At the moment just VMware but in the future we plan to support XEN and Microsoft Hyper V
What are the risks?
The risks to a virtual environment can be categorised as follows:
Management layer - Ports left open back-end SQL database not patched, misconfigured or not backed up.
- ESX hosts, not patched, misconfigured, authentication not adequate
- Storage configuration - virtual machines not separated out according to business function, possibility of data leakage
- Network configuration - network misconfigured allowing data breaches
- Patching - virtual infrastructure not patched, os not patched, vm’s not patched-Virtual Machine layer - misconfiguration
Can you Demonstrate how VMInformer can save me money?
One ESX host, one VM and the management layer could take 2 man days. To remediate and test the changes,could then take another 3 days. Assuming a 7 hour day at £40 an hour for 5 days would result in a cost of £1400.
Virtual environments consist on average 40 Hosts and 120 virtual machines. VMinformer can audit approx..... 5-6 ESX hosts and 100 VM’s in about 20 minutes.
How will a well controlled Virtualised Benefit my business?
Maintaining a good level of control and visibility in any environment be it virtual or physical will have enormous benefit to any organisation. It will improve efficiencies in terms of operations and management and ultimately make your organisation more profitable as well as secure. It will also demonstrate to external parties that you are running a good ‘ship’ and may help you towards meeting compliance directives
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