Investing in Virtual Server Security

Schwan Foods, a multibillion-dollar frozen food producer, was an early adopter of VMware ESX Server technology. This Computer World case study describes how Schwan implemented virtualization-layer security.

"'I could put different kinds of sensitive data – credit card or HIPAA, say – on the same systems and lock them down because we followed the same processes, auditing and compliance for them. But I didn't want to put a SharePoint server on the same host that was processing credit cards,' he says. 'I could track the data going host to host, but I didn't have the control, monitoring or capabilities to see what was going on within a host.'

"Addressing that situation meant carving hosts out of the resource pool and creating lockbox environments for sensitive data. And that, in turn, meant Schwan wasn't getting enough throughput or efficiency out of its hosts, Miller says.

"So Schwan immediately began looking for a virtual firewall that could sit at the virtualization layer and do the segregation. It selected vTrust Security from Reflex System, at the time one of the only companies offering a virtual firewall, Miller says."

Read the Full Case Study at Computer World