Businesses in the United States and Europe are taking full advantage of cloud computing and virtualization technologies to gain a competitive advantage over rival firms and reduce overall IT spending. According to a recent study by Kaspersky Lab and O+K Research, approximately 81 percent of American companies are running mission-critical services in a virtual environment.

"For the majority of businesses virtual environments are no longer experimental," Kaspersky Lab executive Konstantin Voronkov said. "They are widely adopted and used in the most business-critical applications, such as databases, email and CRM systems."

The study also found that virtualization is not necessarily new in the private sector, as more than three-quarters of U.S. decision-makers said they implemented the technology more than one year ago, while another 17 percent deployed it more than three years ago. However, many organizations are skeptical to adopt virtualization-specific security tools.

According to TechNavio, the global market for virtualization security solutions is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 47 percent through 2014. As more businesses implement virtual technologies to prepare for big data, it will be important for IT managers to deploy the right kind of protective tools.