Almost three quarters (73 per cent) of companies are relying on standard Endpoint Security-class solutions to protect their virtual environments, potentially leading to reduced performance and creating an excessive load on their systems, an IT security product company warns. A third of businesses (34 per cent) remain unaware that specialised security products even exist.
Kaspersky points to the findings of a recent survey, that only 27 per cent of companies use IT security solutions that are specifically adapted for virtual environments. Of these, nearly half (48 per cent) use agent-based solutions. Specialised agentless and light-agent solutions are still uncommon, the IT firm adds, and are used in just 35 per cent and 15 per cent of cases respectively. Using Endpoint Security-class solutions on virtual machines can create a number of issues. For example, scanning for malware and updating databases on multiple machines simultaneously can have a negative effect on the quality of service, create excessive loads on the infrastructure or even lead to service failure.
To prevent this, specialised solutions can be used to minimise the load on each protected machine. This involves the heaviest components of the solutions, namely the scanning engine and database updates, being moved to a dedicated virtual machine – a Security Virtual Appliance (SVA). This dramatically reduces the impact of resources on endpoint desktops and prevents problematic situations of peak loads on the entire infrastructure through centralised queue management and optimised scans.
Alexander Onishchenko, Product manager at Kaspersky Lab, said: “Compared to traditional Endpoint Security, most customers of specialised solutions benefit from lower resource consumption and enhanced performance, but this is not the only reason. In large installations, the ease of management that accompanies an agentless approach is the top factor, and when it comes to securing VDI environments, a light agent approach becomes the only way to achieve high performance without compromising the security.”
