Data Center Security Practices from Cybersecurity Experts: How to Protect Your Interests?

With data being stored, there needs to be a data center security strategy if the data will be managed properly. Experience shows that it only takes one data breach to devastate a company and cause long-term financial, legal, and PR nightmares.

Some enterprises store and manage their data internally. Others have migrated their data to the cloud, trusting their data storage and security to other companies. One of the first questions that needs to be asked when discussing data center security is whether critical workloads are insulated from external cyber security threats.

There have been several trusted data centers that have experienced massive data breaches. When these data breaches make headlines, customer confidence is shaken, stock prices fall, and the businesses responsible for maintaining the breached data may close their doors. 

According to Forbes, data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the first six months of 2019 alone. Often, there is a link between data center breaches and the desire to cut corners to save money. The absolute last thing any organization wants is to end up spending millions of dollars to solve a problem that could have been avoided if they had not chosen a cheap hosting solution. 

There are secure hosting solutions that don't cost you a fortune, but they're suitable for small businesses rather than large organizations. Your business needs an architecture that best meets your requirements, whether it be cloud-based SaaS or IaaS, on-premise or hybrid architectures. PAM as a service solutions are a great option as you can rely on experts to implement, optimize and manage solutions that can be challenging. Whatever the case is, cybersecurity infrastructure is something you must invest in to keep your sensitive data safe, secure, adequately protected, and taken care of the best way possible.

Many data center breaches can be prevented if there is a zero trust model that has been adopted. This zero trust mindset involves the design of the physical structure in which the servers are stored, how the network racks are designed, and every other component that is used when designing the data center.

 What Is Zero Trust Architecture?

Zero trust architecture is a relatively new concept that has grown out of the need to provide protection against sophisticated hackers and malware. We live in a world where there are billions of Internet of things devices and devices being connected to the cloud. Zero trust literally means that there is no perimeter that is trusted.

Every single device that tries to connect to a data center is not trusted, and each device or user can only receive the least privileged access. Even after a device or user has been authorized, their access is capped at the lowest level. Zero trust architecture is designed to stop security breaches in their tracks.

Traditionally, security models operate on the assumption that an internal network can be trusted. However, trusting activities on an internal network have done little to minimize the number of cyber attacks and insider threats that have plagued data centers. Therefore, the zero trust architecture method has been employed.

This could require the use of the next generation of firewalls that have decryption capabilities. Current security models focus on protecting the perimeter of a network. However, once the threat is inside the network, it is free to grow and to adapt as it chooses. The result is that sensitive business data stored in a data center is vulnerable for extraction.

The Role of Security Layers and Redundancies in Protecting Data Centers

You must use security controls and the system checks as part of the structure of a data center. This includes software systems and the design of the building. Security layers can fall into physical or digital categories.

Physical Security Requirements for a Data Center

As with most things real estate, everything starts with the location. When determining the most secure location for a data center, it's good to test the geological activity in the proposed construction site. Is there a risk of flooding? Are there other high-risk industries in the area? If so, these could impact the physical security of the data center.

 There is a little flexibility in picking a physical location as some natural security risk can be mitigated with the construction of barriers or including extra redundancies in the building's design to protect against flooding, earthquakes, etc. However, if the option exists, it is preferable to avoid conditions that could affect the physical security of the data center.

 When it comes to the building and the grounds, there are several security measures that can be employed, including fencing and walls and minimizing entrances to the property and building. Extra backup power from UPSs and generators must be included in the infrastructure. Security features like man traps, which create airlocks separating two separate doors and require authentication to enter both doors, are a must.

 The design of the data center should allow authorized maintenance staff to perform their tasks and freely travel between all the buildings on the grounds without giving them unsupervised entry or access to sensitive materials. The initial construction should consider future expansion if that becomes necessary.

Digital Security Layers in Data Centers

Intrusion detection and prevention systems can alert security personnel of advanced persistent threats. Advanced persistent threats are typically carried out by hackers who have a clear goal in mind. They are not just looking for random data, but they have something that they want to collect.

 Detecting advanced persistent threats in a data center requires real-time monitoring. The network and system activity needs to be constantly scanned. An alert needs to be sounded if there is an unusual event. Examples of unusual events might include:

•     A rise in the number of users who have elevated rights or who are accessing the system at random or at unusual times.
•     A jump in service requests that might show a distributed denial of service attack.
•     The appearance of large data sets or extensive data sets migrating around the system.
•     Enormous data sets being extracted from the system.
•     A rise in phishing scam attempts that target high-level privileged personnel.

 To address these types of attacks, intrusion detection and prevention systems can store a baseline of typical system states. These are checked against network activity in real time. Abnormal activities trigger a response. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and artificial neural networks are increasing the effectiveness and potency of intrusion detection.

 Data center security should be taken seriously. This is because more organizations are migrating their mission-critical services and workloads to hosted servers and are opting using cloud computing infrastructure. This makes data centers the prime target for nefarious individuals.

 It is imperative that organizations compare their actual practices against best practices and make the needed adjustments to maintain data center security. The worst thing that an organization could do is wait for a breach to occur before they act to protect their data. No organization wants to be the next headline on the news because a breach in their data center led to private information being exposed.