ISC2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Question

Your firm is designing a new private IaaS cloud that will host multiple tenants processing sensitive data. To reduce the risk that a compromise of a single VM or device driver could expose the entire host, the security architect insists on a hypervisor whose core contains only the CPU scheduler and memory manager, while all device drivers run in isolated service domains outside the hypervisor. Which type of hypervisor architecture should you recommend?

A monolithic Type 1 hypervisor embedding most device drivers within the hypervisor kernel
An operating-system-level container engine that isolates applications with namespaces and cgroups
A microkernelized Type 1 hypervisor that off-loads device drivers to separate service or control domains
A hosted (Type 2) hypervisor installed on a hardened Linux base operating system

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Answer Description

A microkernelized (also called thin) Type 1 hypervisor keeps only the most essential functions-CPU scheduling, memory management, and inter-VM communication-inside the privileged hypervisor layer. All device drivers and most management services run in separate, less-privileged domains (for example, Xen's Domain 0). If a driver or management VM is compromised, the hypervisor and other tenant VMs remain isolated, reducing the attack surface. Hosted Type 2 hypervisors rely on a full general-purpose operating system; if that OS or its drivers are exploited, every guest is at risk. Monolithic Type 1 hypervisors still incorporate many drivers in the hypervisor itself, enlarging the trusted computing base. Container engines provide OS-level virtualization; all containers share the same kernel, so a kernel compromise jeopardizes every workload and does not meet the isolation requirement.

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