You can’t see your business data in the usual sense of “seeing.” And now that you may be storing your data center in the cloud, it’s even harder to keep in mind that the risks to your data security are multiplying daily!
Nevertheless, maintaining security and backup storage should be top of the list when it comes to protecting your business. This can be costly and time-consuming.
Moreover, exactly where you store your data matters. That’s because this will determine what measures you have to take to protect it. You’re looking for
- efficiency,
- optimization,
- reliability, and
- high security…
…because these aspects are critical to your business success.
In this article, therefore, we’ll discuss types of data center and also look at ways to improve the security of your business data.
What is a Data Center?
By definition, a data center is a system that allows you to store, manage, and disseminate data to support all your business IT functions and other operations. Data centers can either be physical or virtual – the latter being a cloud storage/software-defined system.
Their responsibilities and primary functions vary.
- Enterprise data centers are buildings a specific organization uses to store and manage their own data. These are common among big organizations. They have a huge amount of data that makes it worth investing in their own dedicated data center.
- Colocation data centers are rental facilities businesses can use to store their critical information without investing large amounts of cash and resources.
- Managed service data centers are third-party services your business can subscribe to. They store and manage your data, applications, and networks, and make them available at all times whenever you need them.
- Cloud data centers are offsite, virtual data centers customers access via cloud technology and/or a third-party managed service provider. It can be an entirely private cloud, owned by your organization – which can add to your security.
- Hybrid data centers involve you sharing data between on-premise and public or private cloud. This can ensure you abide by regulations about where your data is stored, yet benefit from agile server responses when demand rises.
- Edge data centers keep many data centrally, but any data you or machinery needs quick access to are where they’re needed i.e. “on the edge.” This is down to two reasons:
- Huge amounts of data take time to send.
- In specific cases, it’s essential to have it on location: think driverless cars when the internet fails, or robot arms checking for manufacturing faults in things on the production line.
However, wherever your data are stored, the data center inevitably holds large amounts of proprietary and sensitive information. It needs to be both physically and digitally secure to avoid possible data breaches – or software vulnerability that fraudulent player can target.
There’s a problem, though.
The focus today is on AI and data analysis for agile and effective business operations.This means you need incredible amounts of processing power to cover all your needs for storage, content-serving, and authorization, authentication, and accounting (AAA).
For this amount of data, centers are having to grow in size. The global data center market is projected to reach $517.17 billion by 2030. On- or off-premise physical centers struggle to expand.
In addition, technology is now more sophisticated (firms can struggle with IT, but hackers don’t!). In addition, remote working continues to increase (bringing its own data risks). Many businesses are therefore migrating to cloud data centers for the specific benefits they offer…
Benefits of a Cloud Data Center
1 Cloud is virtual technology accessible from anywhere. You may find it useful that your data are not in a physical location when you have remote and in-the-field employees.
2 A cloud data center easily scales from a smaller to a larger storage space without you having to make a huge investment in extending a traditional one.
3 Cloud storage is much easier to maintain and operate. You can also stream application updates from it – allowing you to focus on revenue growth to maintain your market position.
4 Cloud data centers perform more efficiently for you and are more reliable compared to the amount of investment it takes to set up. This can make it a more viable option.
5 The cloud provider is responsible for your data security, which offers a certain layer of protection. But you can also add additional layers of security to reduce the risk of data loss or theft.
There are a number of ways you can also improve your data center’s security, so we’ll look at those now.
Ways to Improve Data Center Security
Data center security is even more important if your mission-critical infrastructure will be housed within someone else’s facility.
Here are three ideas to help you think further about what might enable your business to improve its data center security.
1 Find a Trusted Partner to Store Your Core Data
Whether you choose to store your data in an on-premise or off-premise physical facility, or via a cloud services provider, you’re still entrusting your most vital and critical asset to your IT team or a third-party.
You should therefore make sure you engage only with a trusted partner whose reputation, knowledge, and skills are proven. You should check they have a clear, concise, and enforced security strategy to protect your data from security breaches.
In addition, it’s wise to pay for 24/7 monitoring and disaster recovery services. That’s because it’s difficult for your own IT team to keep their cybersecurity skills up to date and it costs in overtime terms. But you can outsource your security operations to managed IT services – or at least outsource disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).
2 Check Your Access Control Systems
You must install proper authorization and authentication systems, as mentioned above, to ensure those who access and use your data are eligible to do so.
For an on-premise data center, consider installing biometric security systems that will control the entrance to the facility. For cloud-based data centers, put access controls like AAA or at least multiple verifications to ensure those who access are
- who they say they are and
- have that level of permission.
3 Leverage the Right Technology and Security Tools
Analyze your business security needs and layer it up using the latest technology. Apart from implementing all the basic security measures (and educating staff!), you must leverage technology to the full by using the right tools in the right place. These might be to protect your:
- mission-critical assets
- general data
- endpoints
- apps
- network
- perimeter
RFIP Can Help You Manage Your Data Center Security
The security of your data is paramount. A trusted managed security service will offer you a secure data center and manage it for you in a way that suits your specific needs.
Here at RFIP, we work with businesses like yours to build security strategies and implement/manage your data center with the latest and best technology solutions to secure your business data. Schedule a call with one of our experts today!