1. Patching -- Patching the hypervisor should be considered a core operational practice in IT and should align with current high-priority patching cycles.

2. Establishing secure communications -- Many hypervisors use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or the newer Transport Layer Security (TLS) along with digital certificates to establish a means of securely communicating with remote clients and management platforms.

3. Changing default settings -- Many hypervisor configuration settings are not secure by default, and some hypervisors ship with default content that can be removed.

4. Enabling operational security -- Common tools and protocols like Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Network Time Protocol (NTP) are used to provide consistency and accuracy in log files, monitoring, and numerous other operational activities.

5. Securing and monitoring critical configuration files -- Every hypervisor platform has a number of files that are critical for configuration and control of the VMM system and services. These files should be carefully protected with permissions and monitoring controls.

6. Securing users and groups -- Restricting these and controlling what they can access is another key step in protecting the system overall.

7. Locking down access to the hypervisor platform -- Most hypervisor platforms have a native console interface that can be accessed both locally and remotely. This needs to be carefully controlled to ensure that unauthorized access doesn't occur. Another major element of hypervisor access control is configuring the local firewall, if one exists.