Once upon a time, we used to think in terms of one hardware server equals one server operating system. Then, along came KVM, Hyper-V, VMware, and all the rest of the virtual machine (VM) hypervisors and more recently Docker with its containers. Now the idea of a single server operating system on a solo box is downright quaint.
Don’t think, however, that just because your servers are virtual instead of physical that they are somehow safer from security threats. They’re not.
As Symantec stated in its new report, Threats to virtual environments, “Virtual machine hosting servers are not any [more] secure than any other type of server. They are just as vulnerable to malware or targeted attacks.”