In a news release today, Gartner's Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner fellow, says that while "virtualization is not inherently insecure  ... virtualized workloads are being deployed insecurely ... a result of the immaturity of tools and processes and the limited training of staff, resellers and consultants."

To improve authentication and access control in virtualized environments, Likewise today announces a technology licensing agreement with VMware.

Neil MacDonald is quoted in that news release saying, ""Virtualization platform vendors have realized the need to architect security capabilities into their platforms instead of relying solely on third-party add-on solutions. As enterprises build out their virtual environments, they should include the security capabilities of the virtualization platforms they consider into their evaluation process."

Likewise Software will be directly integrated and included with VMware vSphere, which will enable vSphere users to manage privileged user access with Microsoft Active Directory.

Let's have a look at what VMware executive Patrick Lin, vice president, product management, has to say about all of this. "As customers continue on the journey to cloud computing, they need to leverage existing security infrastructure for their virtualized environments," said Lin, in the news release. "To help meet this demand, we plan to leverage Likewise software to seamlessly integrate this capability in large-scale environments running VMware vSphere, providing a secure way for customers to manage their access controls."

Case closed. Gartner advises to pay careful attention to security with the advent of virtualization while VMware builds in integration with help from leading technology companies, such as Likewise.

Coming up are Gartner Security Summits in Washington D.C. in June and in London later in September for IT and business executives responsible for creating, implementing and managing information security, risk management, compliance and business continuity.