IBM unveiled a new research initiative intended to solve problems associated with virtualization and security Tuesday in San Francisco at RSA 2008. Code-named "Phantom," the project will be run jointly by IBM X-Force threat analysis team and IBM Research. The project seeks to create virtualization security technology to efficiently monitor and disrupt malicious communications between virtual machines, the company said. With full visibility of virtual hardware resources, Phantom will also provide the ability to monitor the execution state of virtual machines.