Auditing virtualized environments refer to the process of reviewing and evaluating the security, operations, and compliance of virtual infrastructure, including virtual machines, hypervisors, and virtual network components. The goal is to identify potential vulnerabilities, risks, and deviations from established security policies and standards, and to ensure the virtual environment is operating optimally and efficiently.
Scope of Auditing Virtualized Environments:
The scope of auditing virtualized environments typically includes the following areas:
- Virtual Infrastructure: evaluating the security and configuration of virtualization components such as hypervisors, virtual network devices, and storage arrays.
- Virtual Machines: reviewing the security and configuration of individual virtual machines, including operating system security, application security, and data protection.
- Network Security: evaluating the virtual network environment, including virtual switches, firewalls, and other network security components.
- Data Protection: reviewing the protection of virtualized data, including backup, disaster recovery, and data security processes.
- Compliance: ensuring that the virtual environment complies with relevant security regulations, industry standards, and best practices.
- Performance: evaluating the performance of the virtual environment and identifying any bottlenecks or issues that could impact the operation of virtual machines.
- Operations: reviewing the day-to-day management and operation of the virtual environment, including processes for provisioning, monitoring, and troubleshooting virtual resources.
Tools for Audit:
There are several tools that can be used for auditing virtualized environments, including:
- Virtualization Management Software: products like VMware vCenter, Microsoft System Center, and Citrix XenCenter provide centralized management and monitoring of virtual infrastructure and virtual machines.
- Security and Compliance Assessment Tools: tools such as Nessus, OpenVAS, and Qualys scan virtual environments to identify potential security vulnerabilities and deviations from established security policies.
- Performance Monitoring Tools: products like VMware vRealize Operations, Microsoft Operations Management Suite, and AppDynamics monitor the performance and resource utilization of virtual machines and virtual infrastructure components.
- Backup and Disaster Recovery Tools: products like Veeam Backup & Replication, VMware vSphere Data Protection, and Commvault provide backup and disaster recovery capabilities for virtual environments.
- Network Monitoring Tools: tools such as Nagios, Zabbix, and SolarWinds provide network-level monitoring and analysis of virtual network components, such as virtual switches and firewalls.
- Configuration Management Tools: products like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet automate the configuration and management of virtual machines and virtual infrastructure components.
Steps to perform this Audit:
To perform auditing of virtualized environments, the following steps can be followed:
- Plan the audit: Define the scope, objectives, and criteria for the audit, as well as the team responsible for carrying it out.
- Prepare for the audit: Gather information about the virtual environment, such as virtual machine configurations, network topology, and security policies.
- Assess the virtual environment: Evaluate the virtual environment for compliance with industry standards, best practices, and regulatory requirements.
- Identify areas for improvement: Identify areas for improvement in the virtual environment, such as underutilized resources, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues.
- Recommend solutions: Recommend solutions to improve the virtual environment, such as adding more resources, improving security, or optimizing performance.
- Report the findings: Prepare a report that summarizes the audit findings and recommendations.
- Implement the solutions: Implement the solutions recommended in the report to improve the virtual environment.
- Follow-up: Schedule follow-up audits to assess the effectiveness of the solutions and ensure continued compliance and optimization.
Checklist for Auditing Virtualization
- Document the overall virtualization management architecture, including the hardware supporting network infrastructure.
- Obtain the software version of the hypervisor and compare it with policy requirements.
- Verify that policies and procedures are in place to identify when patches are available and to evaluate and apply applicable patches. Ensure that all approved patches are installed per your policy requirements.
- Determine what services and features are enabled on the system and validate their necessity with the system administrator.
- Review and evaluate procedures for creating administrative accounts and ensuring that accounts are created only when a legitimate business need has been identified. Also, review and evaluate processes for ensuring that accounts are removed or disabled in a timely fashion in the event of termination or job change.
- Verify the appropriate management of provisioning and de-provisioning new virtual machines, including appropriate operating system and application licenses.
- Evaluate how hardware capacity is managed for the virtualized environment to support existing and future business requirements.
- Evaluate how performance is managed and monitored for the virtualization environment to support existing and anticipated business requirements.
- Evaluate the policies, processes, and controls for data backup frequency, handling, and offsite management.
- Review and evaluate the security of your remote hypervisor management.
- Review and evaluate the security around the storage of virtual machines.
- Verify that network encryption of data-in-motion is implemented where appropriate.
- Evaluate the low-level and technical controls in place to segregate or firewall highly sensitive data on critical virtual machines from the rest of the virtualization environment.
- Review and evaluate system administrator procedures for security monitoring.
- Evaluate the use of secure baseline templates and the security of hosted virtual machines as appropriate to the scope of the audit.
- Perform, “Auditing Data Centers and Disaster Recovery,” and “Auditing Storage,” as they pertain to the environment you are auditing.
Conclusion
The conclusion of a virtualized environment audit summarizes the findings and results of the evaluation of the virtual environment. The conclusion should include information such as:
- Compliance with industry standards and best practices
- Utilization of virtual resources
- Security risks and vulnerabilities
- Performance and efficiency of the virtual environment
- Recommendations for optimization and improvement.
The overall goal of the audit is to ensure that the virtual environment is being used effectively and efficiently, while also being secure and compliant with relevant regulations. The conclusion should provide actionable insights to help an organization make informed decisions about how to best manage its virtual environment.