More than 50% of Organizations Fail to Capitalize on Virtualization Because of Traditional Security

According to the 2014 Global Corporate IT Security Risks survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International in 27 countries, including Saudi Arabia and UAE, 58% of organizations with fully implemented virtualization security are missing out on the benefits of virtualization because of choosing traditional agent-based security solutions. Another 69% of companies worldwide have only partially implemented virtualization security solutions or have none installed.

The survey showed that 55% of global respondents are already using server virtualization with an additional 6% planning to adopt it within the next 12 months. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) has been adopted by 25% of global businesses, with another 10% planning to implement VDI within the next 12 months. The most popular applications for virtual environments in companies appear to be email and communications applications (68% of respondents using virtual infrastructure mentioned them), database applications (65%), customer relationship management (CRM) platforms (65%) and financial management/accounting applications (56%).

Despite virtualization technology’s popularity, 69% of companies have yet to fully implement security for it. Among the 32% that have, more than half are using the same traditional agent-based approach as on physical devices. This largely eliminates the benefits of virtualization, because the solution needs to be installed on every virtual machine, slowing down the whole infrastructure.

“Securing virtual machines with traditional security solutions not only limit the benefits of virtualization, but also can potentially make the infrastructure vulnerable to cyber threats. We offer a smarter approach to securing virtual environments: Kaspersky Security for Virtualization uses light agent technology to ensure optimal resource consumption and effective protection for all popular virtualization platforms”, - said Matvey Voytov, Senior product marketing manager, Kaspersky Lab. 

IT managers and executives are urged to visit Kaspersky Lab’s virtualization security web page and find out more about how agentless and light agent security options can significantly boost virtualization ROI.