Explain to me like I’m 5, why this is a bad idea…

Posted by standard_user937@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 269 comments

Hello fellow sysadmins, today my boss told me to put a hypervisor (ESXi) directly on the internet because “we are already behind on our yearly roadmap, what am I giving up security, so what..” I tried explaining to him why this was a terrible idea, but failed. I tried explaining that putting a hypervisor directly on the internet is like putting your BMC directly on the internet, its not will you get hacked, its when will it get hacked. He didn’t care and said something like “I’ve worked in IT, I know what I’m asking…” he doesn’t even realized how even security vendors like Cisco or Palo Alto Networks can barely secure dedicated hardware/software they make to do this function, let alone having a two person team applying simple firewall rules on top of ESXi is not sufficient. Help me explain like he’s 5 years old or maybe a 1st year computer science student.