Solidcore Systems, Inc., the leader in protecting critical IT infrastructure from devices to the data center, today announced it has extended the whitelisting capabilities of its S3 Control™ software to secure Microsoft Hyper-V virtual environments. Solidcore S3 Control uses combined application whitelisting, configuration whitelisting and unique memory protection techniques to secure Microsoft Hyper-V parent partitions and guest virtual machines (VMs).

Microsoft Hyper-V is a hypervisor-based server virtualization technology that is part of Windows Server 2008. Hyper-V consists of virtual machines and a parent partition that is used to manage the VMs. Securing the Hyper-V parent partition is extremely important because of its elevated privileges for controlling virtual machine functions, such as rebooting VMs and creating new VMs. If the security of the parent partition is compromised, an attacker could gain access to the entire virtual infrastructure. Solidcore protects the Hyper-V parent partition from malicious code and unauthorized programs, and prevents the loading of new drivers or kernel components that can directly impact the Hyper-V parent partition communication with the virtual machines. Solidcore assesses the configuration of the VMs within the virtual environment, and provides the capability to lock down good VM configurations. Solidcore’s memory protection also prevents remote exploits from compromising the Hyper-V infrastructure using a network connection.

“Securing the parent partition or any other virtual service console is absolutely essential, as any failure or compromise of the parent partition puts all of the child VMs at risk,” said Neil MacDonald, research vice president for Gartner. “Because of the ‘thin’ nature of virtual machines, it is impossible to run heavy agents and scan-based security technology. Instead, whitelisting provides the most viable solution to virtual infrastructure security.”

“As virtualization moves further into production environments, we expect to see more targeted attacks on the hypervisor,” said Rosen Sharma, chief technology officer for Solidcore. “Solidcore is leading the charge in virtualization security with proven whitelisting technology that can protect the integrity of critical systems without the performance overhead.”