guang
Well-Known Member
If you've been doing much reading on any of the tech oriented sites recently you have undoubtedly seen the huge number of articles devoted to safe internet browsing practices. All of a sudden it has become 'fashionable' to use virtual machines for browsing and a host of other functions. Some of the journalists have been treating this concept as if it is something new. The reality is that virtual machines have been around a long time and are widely used by developers and beta testers.
What does using a virtual machine for browsing have to do with security? It's no secret that Internet Explorer has been plagued with many security vulnerabilities. The appearance of alternative browsers such as Firefox and Opera have helped with secure browsing and gained in popularity, but even that alone isn't enough to protect against spyware, adware, and malware being introduced into the system. Enter the virtual machine, an operating system that runs within an operating system. With this technology you can effectively isolate certain functions to a virtual machine dedicated to a specific purpose. When the task is completed, reset the virtual machine to a pristine state that eliminates all the recent activity. That eliminates the primary operating system from being compromised by internet activity since it and the virtual machines are separate entities.
I mentioned above this technology has been around for quite some time, so why is it just now becoming popular? First of all, it isn't free if you want to create your own virtual machines and run them on your system. You have to buy the application to create your own virtual machines. However, the virtual machine landscape changed dramatically a few months ago when VMware introduced the free VMware Player. As you might guess from the word 'Player' in the name of the product, you still can't create your own virtual machines with the VMware Player, but here is what it is possible to do as quoted directly from VMware's website
What does using a virtual machine for browsing have to do with security? It's no secret that Internet Explorer has been plagued with many security vulnerabilities. The appearance of alternative browsers such as Firefox and Opera have helped with secure browsing and gained in popularity, but even that alone isn't enough to protect against spyware, adware, and malware being introduced into the system. Enter the virtual machine, an operating system that runs within an operating system. With this technology you can effectively isolate certain functions to a virtual machine dedicated to a specific purpose. When the task is completed, reset the virtual machine to a pristine state that eliminates all the recent activity. That eliminates the primary operating system from being compromised by internet activity since it and the virtual machines are separate entities.
I mentioned above this technology has been around for quite some time, so why is it just now becoming popular? First of all, it isn't free if you want to create your own virtual machines and run them on your system. You have to buy the application to create your own virtual machines. However, the virtual machine landscape changed dramatically a few months ago when VMware introduced the free VMware Player. As you might guess from the word 'Player' in the name of the product, you still can't create your own virtual machines with the VMware Player, but here is what it is possible to do as quoted directly from VMware's website