Hardware virtualization using virtual machines (VMs) has several use cases in embedded systems, ranging from workload consolidation to running applications on legacy operating systems. Operating-system virtualization utilizing containers opens up an additional use case for enabling a DevSecOps (development, security, and operations) environment by packaging an application’s dependencies with the application. Many differences exist between VMs and containers in performance, scalability, and portability, but this article will focus on security.
All types of virtualization provide a basis for security with a goal of isolating software running in a VM or container from other VMs and containers. Different types of virtualization solutions achieve isolation to varying degrees, and how tightly the isolation function is coupled to the virtualization function also can impact security.