Analysis of Virtual Networking Options for Securing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines (VMs) constitute the primary category of resources to be protected in virtualized infrastructures. Out of the two types of protection for VMs – Host-level and Network-level – it is the approaches for the Network-level protection that are different in virtualized infrastructures as compared to those for non-virtualized environments. This is due to the fact that the VMs are end nodes of a virtual network as opposed to being end nodes of a physical network. In this paper, we provide a detailed analysis (in terms of advantages and disadvantages) of some of the key approaches for two Network-level protection measures for virtualized infrastructures – Network Segmentation and Traffic Control using Firewalls. The choice of these two Network-level protection measures is due to the fact that they form the foundation for the network configuration of the entire virtualized infrastructure. We also provide the overall conclusions from the analysis in the form of recommended deployment choices based on approaches for these two network-level protection measures for securing VMs.