Mexico. Comstor, a SYNNEX Corporation company that operates in North and Latin America and focuses on security, collaboration, networking and data center, explains how to protect a data center through the elements that demand the most attention from IT teams to ensure that corporate data is always protected from attacks, failures and leaks.
Data Center is the technological environment where all the operations of a company are carried out. It is also, among it expenses, the most expensive item in relation to maintenance, air conditioning, frequent updates and storage, among other issues. For that reason, when there is a need to reduce operating costs, data center security can benefit. A big mistake for any company.
According to the 2017 Cisco Annual Security Report, security attacks on enterprise data centers have had significant consequences, with nearly 25% losses at these companies from business opportunities, 20% from customers, and more than 30% in expenses. One of the biggest risky examples of such carelessness is the recent emergence of ransomware attacks around the world, which cost attacked businesses more than $5 trillion, in addition to reputational damage.
For the security of the Data Center to be a priority, there are different elements to be observed and ensured. The first points to be addressed in the protection of companies are failures in the accounting of information and repetitive errors, of all the factors that need to be eliminated.
Then, it is essential to make constant diagnoses about the risks that the Data Center may be performing, reinforcing the security of the most vulnerable doors against invasions. Physical issues must be considered, such as the location of servers, restrictions on access to the Data Center room only for authorized persons, the risks of leaks in the place of installation of the machines, consider the possibility of disasters and accidents, among others.
Already from the digital point of view, the security of the Data Center depends on establishing a disaster recovery plan, securing the files before they are stored and acquiring the applications and management software that adapt to the workflow of the entire team. In this way, in addition to protection, it is possible to guarantee economy in time, especially with training, allowing the attention of employees to be focused on monitoring the actions of the Data Center.
There is no 100% secure Data Center whose team is working tirelessly to prevent attacks or disasters. Therefore, the issue should be a priority in companies that have an interest in keeping their information protected.
Threats beyond firewall barriers
Cisco specialists point out that, once threats come from both inside and outside the firewall, users need to adopt more than just a "trust and verification" approach to defend against cybersecurity attacks.
Security must go beyond the perimeter of data centers and span devices from switches to routers, as attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and explore hardware and software vulnerabilities. Thus, the fundamental thing to have a truly secure Data Center is to guarantee the transparency of a reliable system.
That's because thousands of new vulnerabilities are discovered every moment and knowing which of these should be immediately fixed, became one of the main challenges for digital security teams around the world. It is a constant work, since not all vulnerabilities are created in the same way. Some are trivial, while others can be completely destructive.
New technologies demand more from data centers
IoT, Big Data and other technologies that are rapidly becoming popular on the world stage, demand even greater infrastructure of a Data Center, which must obtain more and more, better information.
In Brazil alone, according to a survey by Abes (Brazilian Association of Software Companies), more than $6 billion dollars were invested between 2015 and 2016 in software, services and hardware for the development of the Internet of Things. Signal that large amounts of data need secure data centers to be stored.
In this way, achieving a secure Data Center depends on the ability to identify which software, hardware and systems are priorities, and who needs redoubled attention in the day to day of organizations. These actions are essential to the digital health of any organization.
