A system and method for protecting secure data from virtual machine clones are disclosed. In accordance with one embodiment, a hypervisor transmits a message to a guest operating system hosted by a first virtual machine, where the message identifies a memory location for a secure datum. After the transmission of the message, when the hypervisor receives a direct-copy command to clone the first virtual machine, the hypervisor creates a second virtual machine via direct copy, where the second virtual machine is not provided access to the secure memory location during its creation.