I came across a great article on the Top Secret / Secure Computing Information blog called “Virtual appliances for the security professional“:
Virtual Appliances (VAs) have several advantages over Live CD distributions. They are easier to enable persistence and customize (especially for real performance in a VM, instead of via a bootable ISO). It’s easier to take snapshots that represent a “point-in-time†to rollback configurations — or prevent security scanners from running into loop or crash conditions. Cloning and templating can have significant advantages in terms of agility for testing and scaling architectures, in addition to aiding changes and repair processes.
The article goes on to give you a selection of available virtual appliances from a number of vendors and non-commercial sources that may prove quite useful.
Worth checking out.
Oh – and of course, any article on security+virtualization wouldn’t be complete without mentioning our favorite &^%#* with a blog and ts/sci security passes the test!
(CC licensed image from mms0131’s Flickr stream.)
[tags]virtual appliances, security, livecd, this or that[/tags]
