Cloud Computing: The Great Arms Race For Virtualization Security

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Gavin Hill.

Since its infancy in the early seventies when the first computer virus was created, the malware and anti-malware business has grown into multi-billion dollar industries. No longer are script kiddies creating malware for notoriety, instead the malware industry is run by organized criminals who invest time and money in new technologies and methods to compromise systems for profit.

The evolution of malware is the driver for the progress of security. Malware propagation has gone from floppy disks, to email attachments, and on to remote exploits of vulnerabilities. Malicious software itself has become more sophisticated by using kernel-level code to hide as rootkits, effectively moving down the stack. The result: an ‘arms race’ between organized criminals and security vendors. Each party reacts to changes in the industry to gain the upper hand. Take for example the growth in broadband adoption since the early 2000’s. As broadband adoption grew so too did the number of endpoints in botnets…

Security vendors process in excess of 4 billion requests per day to stop malware from propagating. However, the basic fundamentals of security have not changed in over 20 years. Malware takes advantage of exploiting vulnerabilities in operating systems and applications that run in them. The key point is that security solutions are implemented to stop malware within an operating system; however there is no such thing as a full-proof system…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/11/the-great-arms-race-for-security-virtualization/