The Basic Paradigms of Data Center Security

In today’s age of heightened security concerns, one would assume that businesses safeguard their networks. However, the reality is that about one out of every four businesses fail to carry out even the most basic security reviews of their operations.

A business that has an online presence, especially an ecommerce website that processes and stores their customers personal and credit card information, needs to comply with PCI-DSS regulations and a host of other compliance regulations, aimed at ensuring that the network remains equipped to ward off threats. However, these compliance regulations are the basic minimum required by law or industry convention. It takes much more to actually deliver a strong and robust network that would keep cyber criminals at bay.

Apart from undertaking routine compliance audits to determine whether all the required compliance standards are fulfilled and filling the gaps, network administrators need to deploy additional security measures to safeguard their networks, applications, and mobile devices. This may include firewalls, network monitoring, white listing apps and websites, and anti-virus suites. This is even more pertinent in today’s age of virtualization and migration to the cloud. These moves have created a less secure environment and many statutory compliance standards have not been updated to take into account the inherent risks that these innovations pose to cyber security. Defending the network in the face of these new challenges requires a new security architecture, focusing on deep security. The components of deep security may include deep packet inspection, integrity monitoring, and log inspection, apart from the standard deployments, such as firewall and malware protection suites.

Another key line of additional defense is physical security for the network against both accidental and malicious breaches. This assumes the form of physical locks for the servers, strong access control system to the server room, and secured cabling.

Side-by-side, network administrators aim at 100% uptime, as every second of downtime is catastrophic for online businesses. For this, they need to remain weary of DDOS attackers of various hues and test websites and apps frequently to determine whether they are capable of withstanding sudden bouts of high traffic, or, at least, recognize it.

A data center that hosts the website server is a strategic partner in ensuring the security and uptime of business, and it is important to select a data center that delivers on all these fronts. Lifeline Data Center offers a host of customized solutions with a firm understanding of compliance, security, and up-time, and we are the perfect partners for your online business. Contact us today.

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.