Page 20 - Security Today, July/August 2024

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The Evolution of Data Center Security:
Safeguarding Critical Assets
in Today’s Data Centers
From yesterday’s in-house server room to colocation at data centers By Chris Hobbs
Protecting servers and data has evolved rapidly over the past 15-plus years. Early on, concerns centered around the environmental conditions of where servers were housed within a building and the effects of humidity, temperature and air quality on their performance. This led to a better understanding of the need for a controlled environment to maximize equipment lifespan and capacity. It was also a driving force behind consoli- dating servers in a common space, i.e., the data center.
The focus quickly shifted to points of vulnerability and pro- tecting assets with increasingly stringent access control measures to prevent unauthorized characters from entering and doing something malicious.
An Audit Trail
As sophisticated electronic access control (EAC) solutions emerged, so did the additional benefit of audit trails, which pro- vide greater accountability for who presented credentials where and when. This is useful for capturing maintenance and compli- ance activity as well as forensic information if a physical security breach occurs.
Another major shift in recent years is where data centers are being built. We used to see them located near major power-gen- erating facilities and in geologically and meteorologically safer areas away from seismic-prone and major storm regions. That is no longer the case. With businesses moving more computing off- site and the proliferation of cloud services, more data centers are
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