Data centers are facilities that centralize an IT’s operations and equipment for organizations. They store, process, and disseminate data and applications. Data centers are vital to the continuity of daily operations because they store an organization’s most critical and important assets.
In the past, data centers and their infrastructures were physical environments that were strongly controlled and secured. Since then, the public cloud has drastically evolved. Most modern infrastructures have transitioned from on-premises physical servers to virtual infrastructure.
The Role of the Data Center
Data centers are an important component to enterprise and are created to support businesses and their applications. This means they provide services such as:
- Data storage, management, backup, and recovery
- Productivity applications, such as email
- High-volume e-commerce transactions
- Powering online gaming communities
- Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence
Today, we see over 7 million data centers across the globe. Nearly every business and government has built and maintained its own or has access to another’s.
Types of Data Centers
There are numerous kinds of data centers, including:
Enterprise data centers
These data centers are built, owned, and used by companies for their own internal computing needs. These data centers are customized to the company’s needs and are housed on-premises.
Managed services data centers
A managed data center is managed and monitored by a third-party service. Companies that prefer a leasing model can have access to data center features and functions without needing to purchase equipment or infrastructure.
Colocation data centers
A colocation center will allow a business to rent space within an off-premises physical facility that hosts the infrastructure. This means you don’t have to worry about equipment, power supplies, equipment, security, or cooling.
Cloud data centers
Cloud data centers are off-premises and offer leased, hosted infrastructures for businesses managed by a third-party provider.
Data Center Security Considerations
Data centers are no longer a closed-off environment. The hybrid cloud data center helps IT deliver more business opportunities but also comes with more risks.
Data centers that stretch over multiple clouds tend to create a larger area to attack. This makes networking and cybersecurity more complex. Maintaining precise control of your data center and implementing a standard methodology for security across all environments is important.
Security has to be implemented at numerous locations to follow workloads no matter where they are – on the perimeter, network fabric, and host. These steps can be used to launch a new and updated strategy:
- Set goals by mapping out the ideal future state of your data center network. Always include data center infrastructure management and IT service management.
- Design an access strategy by collaborating with IT/Support and Security stakeholders. Include every group that requires data center access, like Engineering and Legal.
- Look over your data center to get a grasp on its current state so you can start a new plan to reach your desired future state.
- Design a data center segmentation strategy to help reduce risk and business impact. The goal should be to halt hackers in their tracks from stealing data and prevent malware from infecting other systems.
- Plan to implement a best practice methodology to examine all traffic, obtain complete visibility, reduce the attack surface, and stop known and unknown threats everywhere.
- Phase in these best practices over a period of time.
If you are looking for a Raleigh-Durham, NC, data center, contact us today for more information.