Best Security Practices for Your Data Center

Thanks to  IT trends like cloud computing, virtualization, and standardization, the data center industry is witnessing a substantial security transformation. These attempts at data center modernization provide IT executives with a number of additional facilities that cater to better data center management, physical and logical security, disaster recovery, server maintenance and data backup.

However, according to a report from Symantec last year, 75% of organizations admit that data centers increase in complexity due to the latest IT initiatives and new challenges that come along with it. Unless these challenges are addressed effectively, the data center investments in blade servers, virtualization software and other ‘modernization’ techniques will do no good.

So, how can the challenges be met effectively?

Here are some best practices:

• Have a security team involved with the data center design from day one. Security controls should be there for each modular component like storage, servers, network and data which can be united by a common security policy. However, do not let the security approach or intervene in resource scalability or availability under any circumstance.
• Apply consistent identity-, context- and application-aware security policies across virtual, physical and cloud environments to ensure secure connection to data center resources through all devices.
• Virtualization-aware security technologies should be enforced at the network level rather than the server level. Network security integration at hypervisor level will ensure that all the new and existing virtual machines are identified and followed to ensure a dynamic security.
• Continuous monitoring of all assets within the data center at network level can reveal vulnerabilities at any corner of the data center.
• Provide a consolidated and integrated family of products that offer a centralized data center management system. This will ensure a unified management of policy controls, risks and network security while providing audit trails for governance, risk management and compliance objectives.
• Make sure the security techniques chosen offer secure gateway connections to the public cloud resources.

Data centers stores and make information available, which is the lifeblood of your organization, and therefore, they need to be designed with your current and future needs in mind.

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.