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Datacenter Security Transcription

Welcome to our Data Center Security Module. Your data center is responsible for housing your critical network infrastructure and server equipment. It is very important that you keep your data center secure so that your business is not interrupted. Your data center should exceed the operational and capacity requirements not only for today, but also should be able to accommodate growth and the inevitable change.

You should make sure that you have a robust electric grid and wind connectivity with backup power and backup internet connectivity. You should consider hazards as they would apply to your property. And when new technology is available, you should consider upgrading to that newer technology in order to increase your efficiency and resiliency to any type of natural disasters or attacks.

It is important that you make sure your datacenter is properly located in your building. In case of a fire or roof leak, you should not have your datacenter on the top floor of your facility. Because of flooding, you should not have the data center in the basement. And you should not have it on the first floor, because you want to be able to control access to the data center.

You should make sure that your data center is not near publicly accessible areas, and that you are able to control access to the data center. You should not have any water pipes above the data center to prevent leaks. And if possible, it should be located in the center or the core of your facility to provide the most amount of protection from exterior threats.

You should make sure that the doors are secured and monitored and possibly use a mantrap to avoid piggybacking or tailgating attacks. You should make sure that you do not have any windows or skylights in your data center, and you should use full height walls with proper fire ratings in order to decrease the amount of damage that would occur if a fire happened in the facility.

For the CISSP examination, you should remember that the data center should not be in the basement, on the top floor, or on the first floor. Because of the sensitivity of the data center and how important it is to your organization, you should use layered protection. You should make sure that the data center is constantly monitored and that you have alarms to alert your personnel if something is outside of the normal parameters.

You should have alarms that monitor access to the facility, power, any water leaks, your heating and air conditioning system, and also humidity. You should make sure that your data center is secure in all directions from the walls to the floor to the ceiling. You don't want to spend a lot of resources protecting the walls only to have someone enter through the dropped ceiling, and be able to gain access to your facility. You should also avoid windows in the facility. You should restrict access to this highly sensitive area by using segmented rooms or locked cages and racks with very limited amount of personnel having access to it. You should not use sprinklers in the data center because of the fact that water will damage your equipment.

You should use clean CO2 extinguishers because they work well on electronic equipment. You should also make sure that you have a redundant power system in place. You should use an uninterruptible power supply or UPS to make sure that your equipment stays powered on in the event of a power failure.

The UPS should provide enough runtime until you can get your backup generator running. And you want to make sure that your backup generator has sufficient fuel in order to run for a long period of time if necessary. Because heat can severely damage computer equipment, you should make sure that you have redundant heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in case your primary system goes offline.

If an attacker wanted to damage your data center, they could simply damage or power off or disable the HVAC system. And in data centers, it is common to use hot and cold isles in order to make sure that air is flowing efficiently throughout the facility. And to make sure that your equipment does not overheat.

This concludes our Data Center Security Module. Thank you for watching.