Secure configuration in a virtualized computing environment

A computer system comprising:

• a processor and memory storing computer program code to determine a configuration of a target virtual machine (VM) in a virtualized computing environment to protect against a security attack exhibiting a particular attack characteristic by:
• training a machine learning algorithm as a classifier based on a plurality of training data items, each training data item corresponding to a training VM and including a representation of parameters for a configuration of the training VM and a representation of characteristics of security attacks for the training VM;
• generating a data structure for storing one or more relationships between VM configuration parameters and attack characteristics, wherein the data structure is generated by sampling the trained machine learning algorithm to identify the one or more relationships;
• identifying the particular attack characteristic in the data structure to determine a set of VM configuration parameters indicated as associated with the particular attack characteristic;
• and
• generating a VM configuration for the target VM wherein the VM configuration parameters in the determined set of VM configuration parameters are absent in the generated VM configuration.