Along with business units' and IT operations' steady push to virtualize data center servers and components comes a new conundrum for security professionals: how best to maintain adequate controls inside the virtual environment.

Fortunately, there is now a new breed of mature network security options that encompass virtualization, with enhanced features that rival those of their physical counterparts. In this tip, we'll review key factors to consider when evaluating network security virtualization products.

The first step (and arguably the most important one) in the evaluation process is to determine which security virtualization products would be a good fit for you and your organization. The following specific points can help to determine this:

• Cost. Cost is primarily a factor when weighing whether to replace existing