Security Through Virtualization: Creating The Only Safe Internet Experience

In the September issue of this magazine, Brent Goodfellow, in his column, talked about virtualization and its general benefits such as running two operating systems on the same machine (see www.CPATechAdvisor.com/go/1655). He talked about how he was running a Windows XP virtual machine to support legacy software while using Windows Vista on his main computer. I am glad that Brent introduced this emerging technology because I’m going to focus on how to use this technology to your advantage in the fight against viruses, Trojan horses, adware, and other malware that’s circulating on the Internet. I’m going to provide a specific way to use this technology to protect your organization from this stuff.

As you know, we have focused over the past few months on several types of malware that are causing issues for all types of users — JavaScript hacking, web advertising attacks, and, in the break out box on this page, you will find some details on a few new emerging threats.

For accountants, virtualization is a great tool for several reasons. Brent covered several of them in his September column, but I want to highlight some here, as well:

• It allows us to run older versions of accounting software on the systems for which they were designed. As an example, if you still have your old DOS tax application around and want to run it, you could set up a virtual machine on your Windows Vista computer running DOS. Using the virtual machine with the DOS operating system will allow you to stay current while still running older applications.
• It allows us to test things without breaking our main operating system (or junking it up with a bunch of software we are only using for a short period of time).
• It allows us to protect our computers by setting up a virtual computer that, if corrupted with spyware, viruses or other malicious content, we can simply and quickly eliminate the corrupted copy and revert to a clean copy.
• It allows us to go places on the Internet that we would not be likely to go under normal circumstances for fear of infecting a production computer. A virtual computer can easily be taken back to the previous point where we made an undo copy or a physical copy without having to reinstall the operating system or perform other time-consuming operations trying to remove whatever malware we ran across.

As this list shows, virtualization can become a real timesaver and problem solver if you take the time to understand its benefits. This emerging technology is certainly worth a look to see how it can benefit your organization. I will provide a medium level overview of how this technology works and how you can go about setting it up. With some practice and learning on your part, this technology can become another tool in the accountant’s bag of tricks to help keep office computers running trouble free.

Virtualization Summary
If you missed Brent’s article, here is a brief synopsis of virtualization technology. Virtualization is using specialized software to run a guest operating system (OS) on your computer that is separate from your primary operating system. The virtual computer utilizes the same hardware as your primary operating system, which is why it is called virtual. As Brent mentioned in his article, he recently set up a system running Windows Vista as the main software operating system. Using Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007, he then set up a guest operating system running Windows XP on the same computer. The guest operating system can be any operating system including DOS; there are no limitations on what OS can be set up in the guest operating system.