Question
Why is security for VMs more important than security for physical machines?
answer
VMs may perform differently than physical networking devices.
It starts a minimal operating system for a remote user to access.
There is a limited amount of work that can be done on one host.
One bad configuration could be replicated across your network.
answer
VMs may perform differently than physical networking devices.
It starts a minimal operating system for a remote user to access.
There is a limited amount of work that can be done on one host.
One bad configuration could be replicated across your network.
Answers
GPT-5 mini
Best answer: "One bad configuration could be replicated across your network."
Why: VMs are easy to clone, snapshot, and deploy from templates. A misconfigured image or vulnerable template can be propagated quickly to many hosts, multiplying risk. Also virtualization concentrates many workloads on a single physical host and relies on a hypervisor — so a compromise or misconfiguration can affect multiple VMs. The other statements are not primary reasons:
- Performance differences vs physical networking devices isn’t the main security concern.
- "Starts a minimal OS for a remote user" describes a use case, not why VM security is more important.
- "There is a limited amount of work that can be done on one host" is incorrect — hosts often run many VMs, increasing blast radius.
Why: VMs are easy to clone, snapshot, and deploy from templates. A misconfigured image or vulnerable template can be propagated quickly to many hosts, multiplying risk. Also virtualization concentrates many workloads on a single physical host and relies on a hypervisor — so a compromise or misconfiguration can affect multiple VMs. The other statements are not primary reasons:
- Performance differences vs physical networking devices isn’t the main security concern.
- "Starts a minimal OS for a remote user" describes a use case, not why VM security is more important.
- "There is a limited amount of work that can be done on one host" is incorrect — hosts often run many VMs, increasing blast radius.