The increase in the number of cyber attacks highlights the devastating effects they can have on revenue due to stolen assets, damage control, lost productivity and reduced brand confidence. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, in the two thirds of 2010, over 370 security breaches exposed over 12.8 million records. And that’s just the reported breaches.

With the migration to cloud computing, security becomes even more important as organizations rely on an external provider for data segregation, data privacy, privileged user access, availability and recovery. Location independence and the possibility of service provider subcontracting result in risks that go beyond the reach of the typical approach to security.

Traditionally, cyber security defends against external threats at the gateway to the network using dedicated firewall/IDS/IPS hardware. But internal attacks pose an equal, if not greater, threat. The cost savings of cloud computing come from distributing equipment costs across many companies and the subscriber is dependent on the cloud service provider to maintain security between subscribers. The lax security policies of one company in the cloud can put another company at risk.

The vector of attack is no longer limited to the gateway of the physical facility, but extends to threats between physical servers inside the facility and even between virtual machines (VM) running in a single server.

Cyber Security vulnerabilities can put one company at risk from potential lax security policies of another.

Companies looking at cloud computing, developing cyber security devices, or offering data center services need answers to these questions before release and deployment:

• Is the virtual firewall able to offer the same level of protection and performance as a physical appliance?
• Are security policy moves in-sync with the VMs?
• How does enabling different levels of security impact performance?
• When under attack, does data performance stay at the same level or drop dramatically?
• Can an SLA be guaranteed?
• What is the performance impact during a virtual migration?

To validate your solution, your test bed must reproduce the complexity and scale of a real network, down to the VM level. If your test system can’t deliver this level of realism, you can’t have the assurance that the system will perform in a real network.