Many enterprises and organizations don’t have the resources to maintain — or the budget to afford — the IT infrastructure required for big data analysis or cloud computing. More are relying on data centers for their data management, storage, backup, and recovery.
Recognize the Challenges of Data Center Security
With all of a large corporation’s data, employee information, and intellectual property stored in a data center, however, it becomes a desirable target for cyberattack. Furthermore, data centers shared by multiple businesses and organizations can represent an even bigger potential return of monetizable data for hackers.
Radware’s 2018-2019 Global Application and Network Security Report states that cybercriminals are continually looking for new ways to breach data centers, and they’re increasing their use of emerging types of attacks. From 2017 to 2018, DNS attacks increased from 33 percent to 38 percent; burst attacks rose from 42 percent to 49 percent, and bot attacks grew from 69 percent to 76 percent.
While the instance of a variety of cyberattacks continues to grow, unfortunately, so does the cost for the victim. The Radware study reports that the average cost of a cyberattack now stands at $1.67 million.
Provide Comprehensive Security
With so much riding on data center security, they must be protected from all types of risks and threats. Data centers require iron-clad physical security, including surveillance systems, security guards, and access control solutions, to ensure that only authorized personnel has access to infrastructure. Some companies responsible for data centers go so far as to keep their locations secret. Data centers must put plans in place for dealing with force majeure to ensure users can continue to access data in the event of a flood, earthquake, fire, or other types of disaster.
Data center security must go beyond physical measures to also secure them digitally. Security solutions for data centers are more complex than those designed to secure a network. Rather than a single point, the solution must address security for a sophisticated and scalable cloud environment.
To meet this demand, security solution providers integrate security servers with robust security information and event management (SIEM) systems that include:
- Next-generation firewalls
- Virtual private network (VPN)
- Intrusion detection system (IDS)
- Traffic shaping
- Content filtering
- Deep packet inspection (DPI)
- Unified threat management (UTM)
- Anti-virus applications
Taking a layered approach to security, using all means of physical and digital security, will give businesses and organizations a greater ability to identify and stop threats, both from external sources or from within code embedded in the client’s files transferred to the data center.
Use Data Center Hardware That’s Up to the Challenge
It’s routine to evaluate data center hardware to optimize performance and control costs, but an often overlooked aspect of data center hardware is whether the
manufacturer designed its products with security in mind.
Data center hardware needs to facilitate advanced security solutions with features and capabilities, including:
- High throughput capacity and I/O density to meet the demands of high-end applications
- Parallel computing to support DPI and other detection methods
- Load balancing to enable traffic redirection
- High availability achieved through modularization and hot-swap capabilities
- Standardized API management of hardware platforms
- Scalable design
- Hardware acceleration units that meet encryption/decryption requirements
- Support for software-defined networking (SDN), which can provide traffic redirection and automatic security policy configuration.
- Support for network function virtualization (NFV) to provide security resources on demand.
Network appliances designed to meet data center security requirements give solution providers the ability to implement state-of-the-art security measures. Moreover, they lay the foundation for businesses and organizations to have the advantage of optimized security solutions. For businesses in highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, legal, banking, and payment, data center hardware with features that support security solutions can also help keep them in compliance with laws and standards that mandate security best practices.
Benefit in Added Ways from Using Optimal Data Center Hardware
Network appliances optimized to support security solutions also provides additional benefits.
Zero Network Risk
During high traffic flow, data center hardware designed to handle advanced security solutions will prevent crashes or interruptions to network operations. This not only preserver user experience, but ensures that all traffic is analyzed.
High Efficiency
Appliances make the best use of resources, minimizing waste and costs.
High Reliability
Data center hardware capable of supporting advanced security solutions ensures a consistent level of performance.
High Speed
Optimal data center hardware reduces latency and enables real-time network and traffic analysis.
Considering the current threat landscape, security must be a top priority for any data center. The effectiveness of security solutions shouldn’t be hindered by data center appliances that aren’t up to the task. Build data centers — from the ground up — to ensure every measure to protect data and infrastructure is possible.
Learn more about
network security solutions from ADLINK.