BeyondTrust Survey at VMWorld Shows What it Takes to Get Attendees in a Tutu

Right here from the exhibit floor at VMWorld we took a short three question survey of 57 conference attendees and the results are shocking.

• 44% of attendees said their colleagues could steal sensitive information from mission critical servers if they wanted to and another third of respondents said their colleagues "might" be able to


• 37% of attendees say "most" of their mission-critical servers are virtualized and 61% said at least some were.


• When asked what their colleagues would do for $20 million:
  35% would lose their job and leave the country
  35% would leak information to a competitor
  The most popular answer was 40% of attendees believe their colleagues would wear a tutu for $20 million (we believe this number is underreported)

We recently posted that virtualization was creeping onto mission-critical servers, which use to be kept on physical servers for security reasons. This survey shows even further penetration than we may have believed, with almost everyone having at least some sensitive servers virtualized.

So you have (a)sensitive servers in a virtualized environment (b) staff that would steal data for money and (c) staff that CAN steal data and the problem is incredibly clear.

Here's the complete survey results, including plenty of humorous findings in the final question:

Has your company virtualized mission critical servers?

• Most of them: 21 (37%)


• Some: 32 (56%)


• None: 4 (7%)

If one of your colleagues wanted to steal sensitive information from a mission-critical virtual server in the company, do you think they could?

• Yes: 28 (49%)


• Maybe: 14 (25%)


• No: 15 (26%)

What do you think your colleagues would be willing to do to get their hands on twenty million dollars?

• Kill someone: 10 (17%)


• Chop off their own arm: 9 (15%)


• Jump into a water tank with a shark: 10 (17%)


• Lose their job and leave the country: 20 (35%)


• Leak information to a competitor: 20 (35%)


• Wear a tutu: 23 (40%)


• Steak data: 12 (21%)

VMWorld & Virtualization Security

It's been just over three years since VMWare's highly anticipated IPO put the high-tech industry on the edge of our seats. Now virtualization is a staple of IT, VMWorld is full despite dwindling travel budgets and the ecosystem supporting VMWare's technology is bustling.

But virtualization is far from the end of it's growth cycle. A recent survey showed that while 90% of IT environments have incorporated virtualization, security concerns have about 40% of respondents holding back. Over time virtualization has crept up from being an experiment to finding itself running on increasingly sensitive servers

That's why security is the linchpin to the further penetration of virtualization into sensitive servers and to reducing the business risk with the most valuable data in our treasury.

So under that context we'd like to give you a glimpse of what we're demonstrating at VMWorld with technical tutorials that show some key vulnerabilities in virtualized environments and how to address them.