IT SECURITY FROM DATA CENTER TO DESKTOP

Protecting information systems from physical threats can easily fall into a no-man's land. Information security professionals can be distracted by worms and viruses, while facilities personnel are spread thin trying to keep entire sites up and running. When it comes to protecting the physical infrastructure of the computing environment, each of these constituencies may have overlapping responsibilities that are unclear and result in some physical threat monitoring being left undone.

In addition to unintentionally neglecting physical security, many MIS managers continue to struggle with creating more complex rules for network access and the proliferation in both the number and complexity of passwords. The most common tool to remember these very complex and numerous user names and passwords often is a sticky note stuck to the wall or to the bottom of the keyboard, increasing security risks to the network. This all leads to an increased number of calls to the help desk, where password related inquiries represent up to 35% of daily activity.

As a result, it's never been more important to implement strong security solutions to maintain data centers and ensure continuous, secure computing the desktop level.

The Emergence of Physical Threats.
Sometimes so much time is spent worrying about cyber-attacks that the basic problem of physical threats is ignored. The truth is, physical threats have the same potential to interrupt business processes as a hacker or virus.

There are many types of physical threats that must be factored into a security program, including theft, sabotage, human error and environmental disruption. Theft is the most obvious example, but anyone with a grudge against an organization may provide some risk of sabotage against sensitive systems. It's also important to consider the extreme heat at the rack level caused by new data center computing strategies such as high density environments and deployment of blade serves.

However, the hazards from ordinary activity of personnel working in the data center present an even greater day-to-day risk in most facilities. People are essentials to the operation of a data center, yet studies consistently show that people are directly responsible for 60% of data center downtime through accidents and mistakes.

With this in mind, it is important to integrate data center environmental and video monitoring solution. This combination gives customers an end-to-end solution that will ensure the availability of critical network resources.

The need for higher levels of security is also manifesting itself at the desktop level where finger scan or biometrics technology is increasingly seen as the mist authentic form of strong authentication security and the most convenient form of two factor security.

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