Survey at RSA Conference 2009 Reveals Virtual Firewall Adoption Lags Virtualization Explosion

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – RSA CONFERENCE — Secure Passage today announced that its man-on-the-street survey at RSA Conference 2009 revealed that 72 percent of respondents have not deployed any virtual firewall technology. The survey further reveals that adoption is hindered by a lack of consensus as to the definition of a virtual firewall, increased management burden, and limited visibility into Virtual Networks.

Sixty-nine percent of respondents defined a virtual firewall as software running on a virtual system. However, the largest deployment of virtual firewalls provided by the leading vendors are firewall devices running multiple firewall instances. This gap indicates a lack of understanding of virtual firewall solutions available, vendors’ failure to meet market demand, or both. At a minimum, it strongly suggests a need to more clearly differentiate the solutions being provided today.

The number one management concern about virtual firewalls is the increase in complexity caused by the growth in the number of firewalls, polices, rules and objects. Closely following the top concern is the additional management burden caused by the lack of automated tools and resources to effectively address the increase in complexity. These concerns may explain why 64 percent of respondents do not feel that virtual firewalls will gain widespread adoption for another two to three years.

Forty-two percent of respondents identified that their top security concern about virtualization is users creating unauthorized virtual environments. Twenty-seven percent of respondents are concerned about their limited view into the host operating system and virtual network to identify vulnerabilities. Similar to traditional firewalls, misconfiguration of virtual firewalls is one of the top three concerns.

The survey polled 109 conference attendees that are involved in the IT decision making process for organizations within a wide variety of industries, including health care, government, financial, insurance and telecom.

Join Secure Passage in a discussion of this survey and other security related topics on Twitter @Secure Passage, Facebook, and LinkedIn. For more information on Secure Passage, stop by booth 553 on the RSA Conference 2009 Expo floor.

Posted by Joe Franscells (Disclaimer – I represent Secure Passage)