The transient nature of virtual machines leads people to be more lax about their security, Roger Grimes explains. “Every security threat — and potentially more — that you have with a real machine, you have with a virtual machine,” Grimes writes. VMs are less likely to be patched, users and IT alike tend to use weaker passwords, rogue software that a user doesn’t want management to know about is more common, and Grimes goes on, in Re-thinking the security of virtual machines. There is, however, a safer way to support virtual machines. “If the VM can be isolated from the network or doesn’t have a network connection at all, then there are potential security benefit … but I don’t find that VMs are the answer most of the time.” Software Development