Virtual Machines and You

By the Wyoming SBDC Network Cybersecurity for Small Businesses Program

You’ve probably heard of a thing called a virtual machine or a VM for short. VM’s are a digital environment that is separate from the main operating system on your hardware. This allows you to do things such as running Windows 11 on an Apple Mac, or Unbuntu Linux running on a Windows 11 computer, or even Windows 11 on Windows 11. It allows you to run software that wasn’t built for your machine inside of these VM’s without needing to buy a whole new computer. You might also be thinking, “This just sounds like duel booting,” and that’s not entirely accurate. You are still using your hardware specs for the VM but you don’t need to restart your computer to access these machines. There is also added security benefits to using VMs.

In software development, VM’s are used constantly to ensure any modifications programmers make to their system can be reverted or to ensure their main machine is not affected. How does this benefit you? Well, what this allows you to do is have your personal and work systems on the same physical machine but separate from each other. VM’s allow you to isolate these systems from each other, so what you have on one is not accessible from the other and vice versa. This is achieved through obfuscation of hardware information and system files. The primary machine, the one the VM is running in, is aware of the machine but cannot access it directly, meanwhile the VM is unaware of the primary machine. One of the downsides to this is that sharing files from the primary machine to the VM is difficult, requiring either sending an E-mail to yourself or using removable media.

VM’s might be a bit intimidating to set up but it’s become a lot easier in recent years. Most VM software have easy step by step instructions for making VM’s on your machine. Some even set them up with only a few clicks of a button, with very little input from you. The only difficult part of VM’s today is acquiring the operating system of choice. Any Linux distribution is free and all comes down to preference or needs, Unbuntu is the most common Linux distribution, but there’s Linux Mint, Debian, Fedora, or PopOs. Mac OS is more difficult because while the operating system is free from Apple, not all work with VM software and the Operating system install files support each other. Meanwhile for Windows, you need to pay for a key to activate windows in the VM, unfortunately you can’t use the same key as the main device.

VM’s are also self contained files on the Primary machine, meaning that as long as you have the password and the same VM software, you can move between Primary machines. VM software also has the ability to create backups and restore points for your VM, allowing for ransomware protection and the ability to recover files.

Meanwhile the VM software is also primary machine operating system dependent. Virtual Box is the most popular and will run on Windows, MacOS and Linux, with the ability to run a verity of Operating Systems. MacOS also has another VM software called Parallels, this one is specifically designed for Windows running on Mac. Linux also has a verity of VM software with a lot of open source options such as winboat for windows applications on Linux. This is not an exhaustive list and each has its own pros and cons as well as requirements to be able to run.

To Summarize:

PROS

  • Obfuscation of Software & Hardware
  • Separation of Work & Personal Computers
  • Portability
  • Software Compatibility
  • Backups & Restorability

CONS

  • No Easy File Sharing
  • Can Be Costly Either VM software or Operating System
  • Can Be Resource Hungry
  • Not as Fast as Independent Systems