Dec 29, 2022
0 Data Center Data Centers

Datacenter Security in the Age of Cyber War

Data centers are essential to the global economy’s future.

Certainly, as more people and organizations migrate to the digital realm, the demand for efficient information processing grows. Data centers serve as communication networks even remotely, enabling end users to access information quickly.

Data centers are more important than ever at a time when remote working environments are expanding and becoming more common.

Data centers are much more than they appear. They are central to a digital transformation movement.

The global data center market is expected to reach $105.6 billion by 2026.

The expansion of data centers shows no signs of reducing. On the contrary, there is an increasing demand for greater digital data access, processing, and storage.

Global Data Center Market

Understandably, the combination of remote working trends and a tech-savvy culture indicates that the data center market size will continue to grow indefinitely.

Growth, however, has its challenges.

One of the most significant barriers facing data center expansion is how the sector can comprehend to manage its security issues.

Data security concerns 76% of business data centers.

Data security is the company’s first worry, as it can expose enterprises to unintended data loss, corruption, and exposure. However, security solutions can be time- and money-consuming for data centers that handle vast amounts of data.

Simply put, assume you have million dollars & you are responsible for safeguarding them. Would you leave it open for criminals to steal or lock it away?

This parallel applies to your data center, a virtual goldmine of information. Still, many businesses prefer to do the bare minimum regarding data center security. The data center of your organization, which consists of connected computers, servers, and devices that process, distribute, and store valuable information, is an integral part of its digital infrastructure. The mix of policies, methods, procedures, and technology that protect data centers from cyber attacks and other virtual dangers is known as data center security.

So, what data security standards should you be aware of to meet and maintain compliance?

Let’s talk about it.

Firstly what data can be found in the data center, and how can the data be exposed?

It should be no surprise that data security is critical for any business. It’s priceless information that can make or extinguish your business. Examples of data contained in a data center include proprietary information like intellectual property and trade secrets, as well as personal and financial information from clients.

  • Customer trust and reputational harm: Why should your customers trust you if they know you aren’t protecting their data (or even your intellectual property)?
  • Noncompliance fines from industry rules: PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SAE 18 (previously SAE 16), and ISO 27001: 2013 are among the regulations that have data center security standards.
  • Financial losses and revenue loss: Organizations are concerned about downtime because it could result in large revenue losses.

Tip for Datacenter Security in the Age of Cyber War

Datacenter Security

Tip #1: Data Center Security at Physical Level

When people evaluate the security mechanisms to secure their organization’s data, they often overlook the physical security aspect. Why? They are frequently focused on concerns about data loss hazards caused by cyber assaults and data breaches.

Businesses may need to realize that physical security threats can be among the most damaging.

If you’re building your own data center rather than using a cloud or colocation data center, it’s critical to plan out the physical space of your data center ahead of time. This includes selecting if your data center should be in a remote location or in a more crowded area.

But, in terms of security, what else should you consider when choosing a location for a data center? Keep an eye out for weather-related hazards and low-lying places. Keep an eye out for heated geological zones that are prone to earthquakes.

If you intend to build in a more densely populated region, you can conceal your data center by making it blend in with its surroundings.

Physical Security Measures for Data Centers

Aside from the location, there are numerous other physical security concerns. Datacenter hardening can comprise the following measures:

  1. Walls and structures made of reinforced concrete can defend the facility from external attacks.
  2. Server cabinets and cages that are anchored to the ground and locked.

3. Temperature and humidity variations are monitored and regulated via environmental controls.

Tip #2: Invest in the Right Tools to Protect Your Data and Network

Traditionally a solid data center security plan employed perimeter-based security solutions to monitor and protect your network from both internal and external threats. But, nothing is constant in security, and this is especially true when it comes to the basic approach and model that many firms are adopting.

Zero Trust cybersecurity is a term that isn’t necessarily new but has become increasingly relevant as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. Zero Trust solutions are quickly becoming the norm for remote and scattered employees. The concept is that no person or device, whether inside or outside the system, should be automatically trusted.

If you wish to harden your data center’s cyber security even more, you can (and should):

  • Audit your assets, security management processes, and access protocols regularly.
  • You can protect data between endpoints via network encryption and on the server by using server-level encryption.
  • To continuously monitor logs and report on security events and threats, integrate automation and security information and event management (SIEM) solutions (or use a third-party service).

Tip #3:  Monitor and Restrict Physical & Virtual Access

However, more than having door locks and cameras are needed to secure your data. It would help if you also kept an eye on digital access. Why? According to IBM and the Ponemon Institute’s 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report, 49% of data breaches were caused by human errors and system malfunctions rather than cyber attacks.

Tip #4: Have Redundant Data Backups and Infrastructure in Place

No matter how often we discuss data backups, more is needed. As you’ve read in the news, ransomware and cyber attacks have impacted major municipalities, hospitals, and companies. However, for some reason, organizations prefer to refrain from taking the necessary safeguards to create redundant data backups.

Is it due to laziness? Perhaps it’s the “it won’t happen to me” mentality. Regardless of the reasons why they shouldn’t, having redundant backups – both data and secondary infrastructure — in place can save you a lot of time, money, and problems. When the crap hits the fan — and it will, inevitably — you’ll wish you’d taken the time to prepare.

Tip #5: Keep Your Servers and Systems Updated

Nobody enjoys taking time out of their day to run tedious updates and patch their systems. After all, you have far more essential things to attend to, don’t you?

Keep your servers and systems updated

When manufacturers offer patches, it is their means of plugging any security holes found in their devices. It’s similar to fixing a hole in your roof to keep rain from spilling or leaking through. It’s their technique of patching the flaw before a lousy man can exploit it and cause problems.

Final Thought

Your network computers, servers, and other critical components are kept in your data center. In a calamity, it serves as a safe refuge for your data.

You have less control over the physical security measures in place if you consider hiring a cloud or managed hosting service provider than you would with an in-house data center. However, you can request compliance reports from the service provider, giving you more confidence in their security capabilities.

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Jun 24, 2021
0 Data Center

Data Center Checklist – Key Pointers to Consider

Data Center Checklist

In today’s Data-Driven world, Data Centers have an important & indispensable role to play. They are the home to numerous servers that drive the Internet and networking. Recently, the world has witnessed a massive transition in the technologies being deployed in these Data Centers. Server Visualization and powerhouses offering high-speed connectivity are seen as technological upgrades.

Data Center Checklist

However, any end-user of Data Center needs to consider some critical components, which are listed below-

  • Security

Today, Data Centers store vast volumes of critical data that are processed and distributed across used for driving valuable insights. This data varies in terms of vitality and confidentiality. Hence, security is one of the significant factors that must not be compromised at any cost. The capability of servers to encrypt the data, uplink security, etc., are some worthy aspects to consider for enhancing online security. Additionally, there also needs to be a proper hardware security recovery plan, which can be implemented in case of an unforeseen disaster or mishaps. Hence, servers and other hardware must be adequately secured against thefts and natural or human-induced disasters. Thus, the user needs to choose a Data Center provider that ensures the highest levels of security on multiple layers.

  • High-Speed Connectivity

High-Speed Connectivity is an important aspect when selecting a Data Center. Businesses usually like ‘High Speed,’ ‘High-Speed Servers,’ etc., but these are misleading. A Data Center user needs to understand that High Speed refers to the backbone network that connects Data Centers users and providers. Besides all this, the Data Center providers should also offer customized Solutions like routers, switches, load balancers, and their blueprints. A professional Data Center provider will go beyond providing traditional services and ensuring the guaranteed uptime.

  • Reliability

Reliability is an important consideration when evaluating a Data Center provider. It becomes essentially important to have robust backup plans and RAID offerings. The power systems must offer high backup, and the power equipment is well-versed in tackling emergency situations. As an end-user, he must carry out extensive research and review checks about the Data Center provider and the service quality level that they offer. Discussing the requirements with a Data Center provider like ESDS can make the decision process faster and efficient. Data Center users must have a clear idea about their provider’s Disaster Recovery mechanism and the guarantee levels for securing the critical data.

  • Redundancy

Today, most of the leading Data Center providers have their Data Centers located at multiple locations and different seismic zones. These redundant Data Centers help in the faster recovery of data in any unforeseen disaster event. The data present at these redundant Data Centers are secured by multiple level cyber and physical security. A reliable Data Center Hosting provider will have its different Data Centers in different seismic zones to avoid losses due to natural disasters.

Wrapping Up

The points mentioned in the above section are some critical aspects when looking for a Data Center provider. Users must carry out in-depth research and carefully evaluate Data Center providers on these parameters. Providers offering their own Data Center are keen to offer their infrastructure with the utmost security and end-to-end management. Some Data Center providers also offer a wide array of web hosting services if a user wishes to use them.

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Mar 23, 2021
0 Technology

Making Data Center Smart: How Artificial Intelligence Helps?

artificial intelligence

As data centers become an enabler to a nation’s economy, employing artificial intelligence can yield higher benefits

Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays a pivotal role in capturing, processing, and analyzing data at a much faster rate than ever, today! It is also becoming more efficient and useful to incorporate data elements and managing data centers.

With data becoming a pre-requisite to sustain almost every business operation for insight and business results, data centers are on the crux of this digital transformation. These physical facilities that house the computers and equipment power the information needs of the modern economy. Data centers provide seamless data backup and recovery facilities while supporting cloud storage applications and transactions. Apart from boosting the economy, the data center ecosystem attracts many international tech companies for the nation. Moreover, the presence of data centers ensures an excellent investment climate and employment opportunities for the local community.

Despite their key role in bringing a digital revolution, they are not without problems. According to Gartner analyst Dave Cappuccio, 80% of enterprises will shut down their traditional data centers by 2025. The figures are fitting considering the host of problems faced by traditional data centers like lack of readiness to upgrade, infrastructure challenges, environmental issues, and more. And the remedy for this is leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance the data center functions and infrastructure.

As per a Forbes Insights report, in early 2020, artificial intelligence is poised to have a tremendous impact on data center management, productivity, and infrastructure. Meanwhile, its technologies continue to offer data centers potential solutions to improve operations over the long term. In return data centers enabled by accelerated computing capabilities of AI, would be able to process AI workloads more efficiently.

Data centers consume a lot of energy, so training an artificial intelligence network to improve power usage effectiveness (PUE) is a key goal. PUE is an essential metric to measure data center efficiency. In 2014 by deploying Deepmind AI in one of its facilities, Google was able to consistently achieve a 40% reduction in the amount of energy used for cooling, which equated to a 15% reduction in overall PUE overhead after accounting for electrical losses and other non-cooling inefficiencies. It also produced the lowest PUE the site had ever seen. Deepmind analyzes over 100 different variables within the data center to improve efficiency and reduce power consumption.

Data centers are also susceptible to various cyber threats. Cybercriminals are always finding new ways to obtain data from data centers or launch their next data breach attack. By learning normal network behavior and detecting cyber threats based on deviation from that behavior, artificial intelligence proves to be resourceful again!  Artificial algorithms can complement current Security Incidents and Event Management (SIEM) systems, by analyzing incidents and inputs from multiple systems, and devising an appropriate incident response system.

In a data center, IT devices are often deployed or removed from shelves that brings a lot of fragmented resources, like U space, which cannot be monitored or managed, and are easy to get wasted. By using intelligent hardware and IoT sensors, artificial intelligence allows effective data center infrastructure management that keeps a close eye on the data center and reduces repetitive work through automation. Here, data center managers can automate activities like temperature management, equipment status monitoring, floor security, fire hazards mitigation, ventilation, and cooling systems management. Coupled with predictive analytics, automation also helps in predictive maintenance at data centers.

Further, this AI-based predictive analysis can help data centers distribute workloads across the many servers in the firm. As a result, it will be easy to predict and manage data center loads more efficiently. It will also help in optimizing server storage systems, finding possible fault points in the system, improve processing times, and reducing risk factors much faster.

Recently, MIT researchers had developed an AI system that automatically learns how to schedule data-processing operations across thousands of servers. This system was observed to be about 20 to 30% faster, and twice as fast during high-traffic times in completing key data center tasks. The researchers assert that this artificial intelligence system could enable data centers to handle the same workload at higher speeds, using fewer resources.

Additionally, through deep learning (DL) applications, AI can predict failures and outages ahead of time. E.g.  HPE artificial intelligence predictive engine helps in identifying and resolving bottlenecks in the data center.  A survey of 200 companies highlighted that downtime results in losses surpassing US$26.5 billion, with the cost per minute of a network outage reaching approximately US$7,900. By monitoring server performance, network congestions, and disk utilization, AI can detect and predict data outages. Besides, it can implement mitigation strategies to help the data center recover from the data outage – thus adding to customer satisfaction and minimal losses during such outages.

Source

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