Godfather of Xen Claims Virtualisation Leads to Secure Cloud Computing
November 5, 2011
To many, virtual environments using public cloud platforms could cause many security headaches. But this theory has been refuted by Simon Crosby, known as godfather of Xen…
According to Crosby, virtualisation could lead to better security.
The basic characteristic of virtualisation is isolation which means restrictions on computing in any given context. Crosby, who is the creator of open source hypervisor and also one of the founders of startup Bromium, said that vairtualisation can be used to increase trust of any process operating on any physical system despite the fact that other processes in the same system have been compromised.
In an interview with Network World, Crosby said that a virtual machine manager, a hypervisor, is capable of helping to isolate functions carried out in any system would reduce the risk of an attack, even if it had previously damaged other functions. This creates trust in the process, as published in Network World.
Crosby also added, "I think that when we look back in five years we will actually figure out that the core value of hardware virtualisation is security."