The survey, conducted by European research company KuppingerCole, found that 73 percent of global organisations were concerned that the nature of hypervisors could cause problems. Seventy-three percent of respondents are worried that the far-reaching privileges that hypervisors have could be abused by users.

In addition, the hypervisor also introduces an extra layer into virtualised environments providing another vulnerability that could be exploited. Organisations have not yet considered the security implications of this, according to the study. The research found that 49 percent of respondents had neither implemented a privileged user management (PUM) nor a security log management solution.

Another feature of virtualised environments, data sprawl, is also not being addressed by organisations even though the vast majority are aware of the problem - 81 percent of respondents consider the risk of data sprawl as 'very important' or 'important'. However, although Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions can help manage the risks of data sprawl, only 38 percent of organisations have implemented them.

Only 65 percent of respondents claimed to enforce a separation of duties for administrative tasks across virtual platforms? despite this being recognised as the best practice for virtualised environments.

Companies are loath to use the tools to automate this practice, more than 40 percent of respondents do not use the relevant software. Additionally, only 42 percent of the respondents perform regular access certifications for privileged users or are able to adequately monitor and log privileged access.