How do you balance increasing complexity with security compliance in your Data Center?

Thanks to IT trends like cloud computing, virtualization, and standardization, the data center industry is witnessing a substantial transformation. Data center modernization provide IT executives with a number of areas to improve data center management, physical and logical security, disaster recovery, server maintenance and data backup.

Modernization, however, can bring complexity. According to a report from Symantec last year, 75% of organizations admit that data centers increase in complexity due to the latest IT initiatives. How do you manage the additional complexity securely so the data center investments in blade servers, virtualization software and storage actually improves service levels and meet security compliance?

Here are some best practices:

• Have 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.
• Look for 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 store and make available information that is the lifeblood of your organization. Keeping a reign on complexity while maintaining data center security and compliance is an ongoing challenge. Need help? Call the data center compliance experts.

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.