Data Center Security Best Practices: Is Your Workload Safe?

The strength of a data center is only as good as its security measures. Without the right security practices in place, sensitive company information can easily be compromised.

Organizations running their workloads from an on-premises data center need to secure their physical infrastructure, data, and networks from threats that can come from multiple sides, as well as work to secure endpoints and reinforce strong operational security practices.

So, what’s involved in data center security practices, and how can businesses work to ensure their facilities are safe from top to bottom? Here, we’ll answer these questions.

What Is Data Center Security?

Data center security includes any practices an organization might implement to protect physical and digital resources from natural disasters, unauthorized access, cyberattacks, and other potential threats. This can include protection measures for equipment, software, building facilities, endpoints, and more.

Enacting strong data center security measures can help protect against common threats, like distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, phishing, ransomware, and insider threats. It ensures the protection of valuable assets, maintenance of business continuity, and regulatory compliance with industry-required standards.

5 Key Areas of Data Center Security

There are 5 key areas of data center security businesses should keep in mind when investigating ways to protect their environment: Physical, network, data, endpoint, and operational security.

1. Physical Security: The data center and its equipment are protected from unauthorized access and natural disasters with reinforced structures, backup power, and disaster recovery measures.
2. Network Security: The network infrastructure is secure from cyberattacks and other forms of unauthorized access.
3. Data Security: Data that is stored in the facility is kept safe and confidential, and it is available when needed.
4. Endpoint Security: Endpoints that access the data center, including servers, mobile devices, and computers, are secured.
5. Operational Security: Ensuring the policies and practices of personnel working in and with the data center abide by security best practices to reduce risks.

Data Center Security Solutions and Best Practices

To satisfy all 5 areas of data center security, organizations should consider implementing the following solutions and best practices.

Physical Security

• Access Control Systems: Physical access can be limited to authorized personnel and visitors with the use of card readers, biometric authentication, video surveillance, and gates.
• Surveillance and Monitoring: The interior and exterior of the data center can be protected using video surveillance systems that can detect intrusions or any unexpected physical activity in and around the building.
• Fire Suppression Systems: Buildings should have sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers installed in data centers to lessen the risk of fire. Data centers also often use clean agent fire suppression systems that remove heat or oxygen to reduce fire while minimizing harm to equipment.
• Temperature and Humidity Controls: To prevent data loss, equipment needs to be kept in an optimal temperature range. Cooling systems, as well as humidifiers and dehumidifiers, can be used to keep levels in check.
• Backup Power Options: Natural disasters can result in power outages, and if a data center is going to remain operational, it needs backup power options, even if the plan is to failover to another geographic location. Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and generators can be used to power critical equipment and ensure a continuous supply of power until other disaster recovery measures can be taken for more long-term outages.

Network Security

• Firewall Implementation: Firewalls can protect the data center’s network from external threats, blocking unauthorized access and filtering network traffic to reduce the risk of infiltration from attackers.
• Encrypted Communication: With encrypted protocols, businesses can secure data transmission across a network. This can be done through virtual private networks (VPN), a secure sockets layer (SSL), and transport layer security (TLS), a more secure alternative to SSL.
• Intrusion Detection and Prevention: When data centers implement intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS), they can proactively monitor for malicious activity and block attacks before they infiltrate.
• Regular Vulnerability Scans: Ensuring data center security is a moving target. By conducting regular vulnerability scans, organizations can find newly identified weaknesses and address them quickly.
• Secure Configuration of Computers and Network Devices: Within the network, businesses should mandate that all devices given access are configured with strong passwords and up-to-date security patches.

Data Security

• Data Encryption: Data should be encrypted on each end at rest and in transit to prevent it from being accessed by unauthorized users.
• Routine Backups: Natural disasters, hardware failures, and cyberattacks can all result in data loss. Data centers that perform regular backups and implement recovery procedures can minimize data loss.
• Access Logs: Access logs serve as documentation for suspicious activity and can alert organizations to potential security breaches. While reading access logs can be overwhelming, teams can create automations to alert anomalies in activity to focus monitoring efforts.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): When users use more than one device to log in, this can improve security. Making MFA mandatory for all users can enhance authentication security for the data center.

Endpoint Security

• Antivirus and Anti-Malware Solutions: Endpoints can fall victim to malware and viruses, which can be reduced by implementing antivirus and anti-malware software on all devices.
• Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): It can be hard to detect cyber threats on endpoints without a robust tool. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) can find, investigate, and respond to threats that can originate from endpoints in your environment.
• Device Management: Device management policies and tools should be in place to secure and control endpoint devices accessing resources originating from the data center. This can include password policies, application management policies, data encryption, and device security such as screen locks and device restrictions.

Operational Security

• Internal Security Policies: Internal security policies should address all aspects of data center operations, such as outlining who has access to which resources, how data should be handled, and what access different roles in the organization have within the data center.
• Employee Training and Awareness: Any employee that accesses any part of the data center, physically or remotely, should be trained on security threats and best practices. This should be an ongoing practice and can include unannounced tests to be sure that best practices are being followed.
• Regular Audits and Compliance Checks: Businesses, especially in regulated industries, need data centers that meet strict security standards (e.g., HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI-DSS) to maintain compliance and retain cyber insurance. Regular audits and compliance checks help ensure adherence to regulations, mitigate risk, and identify areas for improvement.
• Incident Detection and Response Plans: You don’t want to put security plans to the test during an incident. Maintaining an incident response plan with regular testing ensures your business can quickly contain and recover from security events, minimizing disruption and downtime to keep operations running.

Next Steps: Consider Your Data Storage Options

While the best practices listed in this article require significant commitments in terms of resources and costs, they can improve the uptime, security, and accessibility of a business. However, you don’t have to implement all changes at once to improve your security posture.

There are also options that go beyond on-premises data storage that you can implement to keep your stored data safe. Explore your options and decide what will make sense for your business:

• On-Premises: Retain full control over data, security, and infrastructure by managing everything within your own on-site data center. This is best for businesses with strict compliance requirements or those needing customization, but it requires significant investment in hardware, staffing, and security measures. Additionally, the organization bears the risk of downtime, data loss, and cyber threats.
• Colocation: Maximize availability, reduce costs and risk, and improve reliability by housing your hardware in a secure, professionally managed facility. This is ideal for businesses that want to move away from operating their own data center while maintaining control over their equipment.
• Private Cloud: Gain the flexibility and scalability of cloud computing with dedicated resources that ensure security and performance. This is a great choice for businesses that want cloud benefits without the risks of shared infrastructure, making it ideal for regulated industries or workloads with high security needs.

Enhance Security and Modernize Your Infrastructure

Whether you’re looking to enhance the security of your data centers or transition away from an on-premises model, TierPoint offers solutions to help modernize your infrastructure. With more than 40 geographically diverse, state-of-the-art data centers—backed by industry-leading SLAs—TierPoint delivers the reliability and availability businesses need to keep operations running smoothly.