Is your virtual desktop infrastructure secure?

A recent research paper by Intel on Desktop Virtualization Insights for IT Strategic Planning points out that the primary reason customers adopt Desktop Virtualization is for client security. This is consistent with other research I’ve read, but begs a question. Does VDI in its own right provide better client security than a physical client? The answer is “That depends”.

Central control of client data, operating system and applications is worth its weight in gold. Patches, policy updates and other client configurations changes are applied at once to all virtualized desktops. You no longer need to have all clients connect to the corporate network before the “change” is complete. Remediation of malware is also a snap. Just collapse the VM session and the malware is gone … but you still need to run a virtualized version of anti-virus/anti-malware. This will prevent the loss of corporate data, capturing and forwarding of passwords, and the proliferation of the malware to physical clients in the network. Make sure the solution is based on virtualization-aware security solutions to insure the best possible VDI performance.

Combining a virtualization-aware anti-virus program and dynamic VDI management tools can secure virtual desktop deployments. Don’t forget to complete your protection with data encryption and a backup plan for client data and images and you are on your way to a secure VDI environment.

Learn more about securing your virtual desktop infrastructure.

About the Author: Janet Diaz