Hardware-Enabled Virtualization: Breaking

Through Endpoint Security’s Traditional Barriers

Abstract

The endpoint has been the Achilles heel of enterprise security management for far too long. The flex-

ibility and highly personal nature of endpoint systems have driven their success. At the same time, this

has also made it difficult for large organizations to balance the level of control required to secure the

business, while giving users the flexibility they need. The malicious recognize these facts all too well.

Today, however, the technologies of hardware-enabled virtualization are giving enterprises powerful new

tools for defining control over the business environment, while at the same time offering flexibility that

supports the value of personal computing. In this Advisory Note, ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT

ASSOCIATES® (EMA™) analysts examine the capabilities of hardware-enabled virtualization that

have the potential to transform the nature of endpoint security management in the enterprise.

Getting Over the Past

To say that endpoint security needs an overhaul would be an understate-

ment of the first order. The personal system has long been a primary

focus of attack, and that focus has not changed. Attackers may shift

their attention from the operating system to endpoint application vul-

nerabilities, but the endpoint itself remains a principal target.

For the malicious, endpoint

systems have presented too much

opportunity for far too long.

The reason is simple―for the malicious, endpoint systems have presented too much opportunity for

far too long:

• The endpoint remains highly flexible, and highly changeable—which makes it difficult

to control. Enterprises recognize that they need—indeed, must—get a better handle on

endpoint security management. But when users demand flexibility and control over their personal

• Too much has depended on endpoint software, when endpoint software itself is the target.

The endpoint operating system (OS) and applications have long been targets of attack. And yet,

traditional host-based defenses often run within the endpoint user environment or OS itself,

despite the fact that a successful compromise can render these protections moot. This has the

• Threats that target permanently installed software can persist. Regardless whether OS or

ADVISORY NOTE | 1

environment, the enterprise faces stiff challenges in exerting the necessary level of control to

protect the business. How can organizations balance the endpoint control they need, with

the flexibility users need to be fully productive?

curiously paradoxical effect of relying on potentially compromised endpoint software to protect

the endpoint. How can protection for the endpoint go beyond endpoint software?

application vulnerabilities are the target, a successful exploit of permanently installed endpoint

software can be extraordinarily difficult to eradicate. Organizations need greater confidence in

their ability to detect and eliminate threats where possible—yet without reinstalling a compromised

endpoint system from scratch, few have this certainty. Isn’t there a better way to resolve endpoint

threats with higher confidence?

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