The VM may get compromised, it depends on how you set it up, not all apps need to phone home for a start and dont need anything more than limited network access

The VM may get compromised, it depends on how you set it up, not all apps need to phone home for a start and dont need anything more than limited network access but thats firewall/IPS/IDS domain. You hint your may be corporate unlike a home user who has less tools and disposable income at their disposal and VMware unity is a quick cheap fix as its free for home use. Its ok to burn an image to the ground, do you check your firmware like your bios with something like Copernicus? https://www.mitre.org/publications/technical-papers/copernicus-2-senter-the-dragon https://www.mitre.org/publications/technical-papers/copernic... or HDD firmware hacking ? https://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 https://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack&page=1 Your persistence is right there, doesnt matter how often you reinstall an OS then if you have a system running like a sim card working with a smartphone OS but also independently communicating with the hw like a bluetooth/wifi mesh network but you also have network printers/scanners and other HW that connects to a network to check out to check out the firmware for. I loved having to flash the old EEPROM's, physically taking the chip out, removing the sticker over the quartz window, exposing it to UV light, before sticking the label back over the window and then flashing it on a EEPROM flash machine, that physical process made it harder to hack unlike today. So how quickly can you get your backup loaded on blank servers, workstations and switches? Exchange server can take its time if people have GB+ mailboxes. This is an interesting post mortem of how Maersk handled NotPetya. https://gvnshtn.com/maersk-me-notpetya/#notpetya https://gvnshtn.com/maersk-me-notpetya/#notpetya Theres a lot that can be learnt from it.