Success is wonderful… until you need to scale. Scaling your business is an exciting time - since growth is a positive thing. During all this excitement however, there are a number of concerns, including accountability, relationship management, software licensing, server load balancing and migrations, and security concerns.

"Virtualization" has become a buzzword… and like most buzzwords, very few actually know what it means, like "think outside the box". While the word "virtualization" itself drums up Jetson-like images of the business world, the practical application is, well… just that - a little To help you cut through the buzz around virtualization and understand the possibilities for your environment and network security, here’s 9 things you can do with small business virtualization.

You’ve probably virtualized your environment and enjoy benefits such as high-availability, physical and operational efficiency, and greater time-to-market for application deployment. Virtualization, or abstraction really, is clearly the foundation of the modern software-defined-data-center (SDDC). Whether you have a couple hosts or thousands, ask yourself: are you giving due care to ensuring the security of your host/guest systems and information?

Your data network security is like a chain - it’s only as strong as its weakest link. If you’ve poured ample effort into protecting one aspect, like password protection, but lacked in other data security areas, then your security front may not be as strong as you think.

Securing Humanity You probably hear a lot about information system security these days. Not really a day goes by where we don’t hear about a new threat or exposure. Traditional approaches talk about performing business risk assessment, and using that information to drive decisions. You're ultimately achieving the goal of reducing then accepting a given risk, based on analysis of likelihood and impact to your organization. This approach is logical, sound, and certainly the appropriate way to manage risk and information security for your systems, however, I challenge you to think about another angle.

Network and data security isn’t a battle, it’s all-out warfare. Attacks come often, in varying levels of network security and without warning. Being unprepared is simply not an option, especially in today’s increasingly malicious online world where network security holes in your frontline proliferate.

In today’s world of IT – it’s not a matter of “if” your systems and data will be compromised, it’s when and how bad will it be “when” it occurs. Attacks can originate from inside or outside of your organization so “hopefully” you’re prepared to deal with the damage that an attack will have on your firms reputation.

You're a successful medium-sized business. You have worked hard to build your business and protect your assets. What about your information systems? Have you given due care to securing your systems and information? Today's technology landscape changes dramatically from day to day and it's no longer a nice-to-have nor is just the anti-virus and firewall enough to protect what you've built. Unfortunately, your size business is probably at the greatest risk of compromise.