Data Center Security Assessment: Standards, Regulations and Best Practices

Introduction

Data centers have become one of the most fundamental parts of many businesses today. The primary purpose of any data center is to manage, store, or process information in an efficient way, usually to a wide range of diverse users and sometimes shared by different organizations.

There are different forms that data center services might take, and a company does not have to build its own from scratch to access a datacenter’s resources. For example, both rented access and cloud-provided data center services have been gaining popularity for a while now, and the widespread adoption of cloud computing puts even more resources into this same industry, which was forecast to go as high as $344 billion during 2024 alone.

At the same time, the massive popularity data centers have gained in recent years has also made them the primary target for cybercriminals. Various research confirms this fact, indicating that this has become an enormous issue for any organization. For example, about 76% of corporate data centers have concerns about their data security capabilities. Due to various regulatory frameworks, organizations can also face a significant and painful fine if their data is stolen or held ransom.

The definition of Data Center Security Assessment

There is typically a demand for more data security for data centers, and the threat of ransomware is just one of many potential negative events that might disrupt the regular workflow of entire businesses, leading to potentially massive financial losses or even complete business shutdowns as a result.

In this context, it is essential to not only create or choose data centers with the highest security standards but also assess their capabilities to acquire information about that data center’s security state. This process is referred to as a Data Center Security Assessment – a highly sophisticated evaluation process for data center hardware and software with a single goal of understanding how resilient the data center is against various security threats.

Primary aspects of a Data Center Security Assessment

A proper security assessment process for a data center should be able to cover both the physical and the technological part of its capabilities. Some of the most common categories of factors included in Data Center Security Assessments are:

• Physical state. A large segment of features and checks consisting of all data center security elements from the real world, including its access control mechanisms, fire suppression frameworks, surveillance systems, and the level of preparation for various physical disasters such as flooding or earthquakes.
• State of network security. Most communication protocols between the data center and the rest of the world are evaluated at this step. Due to the sheer number of data breaches happening regularly worldwide, this factor group needs to thoroughly assess secure communication protocols, network segmentation, firewalls, intrusion detection frameworks, etc.
• Operational security. Existing processes and policies must also participate in this assessment to reduce the possibility of a cybercriminal taking advantage of a gap in existing procedures. This is where incident response capabilities are assessed, along with user access management features, data backup policies, and so on.
• Regulatory compliance. Due to their business-oriented nature, most data centers must meet many relevant industry standards or compliance frameworks – HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001, etc. For legal reasons, a data center’s capability to adhere to all the data storage and redundancy requirements is a significant topic.

Common threats to data centers

Data centers can suffer from a surprisingly large variety of threat types, and it is not just limited to a natural disaster or a cyberattack, either. The most common types of threats to data centers are:

• Physical breaches

Any attempt to physically access the data center in question is considered a physical breach, whether to access sensitive information, steal hardware, or implant various tracking or other devices into the existing hardware.

• Supply chain attacks

This attack type has been growing in popularity recently due to its ability to bypass many traditional security measures. It targets software or hardware suppliers to compromise the supply chain and utilize backdoors and vulnerabilities to access the data center. Mitigating the possibility of these kinds of attacks requires an entirely different approach to security, with regular assessments for every supply chain element instead of just the data center.

• Cyberattacks

Cyberattacks come in many forms and purposes, from malware and ransomware that aims to tamper with sensitive information to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks that make entire data centers unable to respond to regular users for a prolonged period. Other attack types include vulnerability exploitation and social engineering.

• Insider threats

Another attack angle that is very difficult to protect yourself against is the insider threat – a malicious insider with access to sensitive internal data who can compromise or steal it (or an accidental insider who falls for a scam or unintentionally compromises the system security with no ill intent).

• Advanced persistent threats

APTs are another form of cybercriminal activity – far more targeted and hyper-focused than the other cyber attack methods. They utilize various persistent attacks to gain prolonged access and tamper with sensitive information. Due to their sheer complexity and commitment, APTs are used mainly by sophisticated criminal organizations or nation-states.

• Compliance risks

While not as malicious, compliance risks can be just as disruptive to an organization’s operations. They can be triggered by practically any other type of data breach and often lead to substantial reputational losses and massive legal fines for any company that cannot comply with regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, etc.

• Natural disasters and other environmental hazards

Not only can any type of natural disaster lead to different kinds of damage to a data center’s physical infrastructure, but there are also other environmental hazards, such as unexpected power outages or equipment failure. These issues can be classified as environmental hazards and can lead to data loss and process disruption, among other issues.

With all that information in mind, we can now explore the topic of security assessments for data centers in more detail.

Data Center Security Standards

Now that we are familiar with the topic of Data Center Security Assessment, it should be noted that several similar terms exist in the same industry. For example, we have Data Center Security Standards – a combination of protocols, guidelines, and recommendations on how data centers operate and protect customer data.

The topic of standards in terms of security can be somewhat complex to discuss, primarily because many companies have their own selection of standards they follow, including both official and unofficial examples. Luckily, there is still a small selection of widespread standards that are most accepted as the centerpiece of the whole idea, such as the International Standards Organization (ISO), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), etc.

General security standard recommendations

The number of different standards and regulatory frameworks in the modern world is quite staggering, and the number seems to be growing at an alarming pace. Here, we will cite six examples of compliance frameworks and security standards that can be adopted to uphold the security of a data center.

• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a combination of standards that all companies that deal with credit card information must adhere to. It is a frequently updated standard that explains how such sensitive information should be stored and what security measures should be applied to storage units, such as data centers.
• HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is another highly specific set of recommendations, with this one targeting primarily the healthcare industry. The goal of HIPAA is to protect and safeguard the personal client information and other sensitive data in the same industry,
• NIST 800-53 (National Institute of Standards and Technology) is a set of standards that includes a short 7-step process for managing the privacy and security of information and links to other NIST standards that cover the topic of information security more thoroughly.
• ISO 27001 (International Standards Organization) is an international standard that outlines some of the most valuable practices for information security management systems. It should be noted that this standard is not exclusive to the ISO category; the 2700 “family” has several dozen other standards that offer various recommendations and standards that data storage units (including data centers) have to abide by.
• FISMA (Federal Information Security Modernization Act) is a set of legal standards that are applied primarily to federal government agencies and their data systems, such as data centers. These standards ensure the highest possible level of security and protection.
• SSAE 16 (Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements) is a combination of auditing standards that can be used to evaluate a data center based on its capability to protect the confidentiality, security, and availability of information it stores. SSAE 16 can use multiple report types, with the most common examples being SOC 1 and SOC 2.

TIA-942 Certification Program

While the previously mentioned standards might cover the technological part of the assessment, the topic of physical data center security is wholly different and big enough for its article. Here, we will only briefly touch upon the physical part of data center security, which uses ANSI/TIA-942 as the means of hardware testing. It is a globally adopted standard for data centers that elaborates on how data centers should be protected in different use cases, physically and virtually.

This standard has four potential ratings, each describing a separate tier of a data center infrastructure based on its capabilities and general resiliency.

• Tier 1 – Basic Site Infrastructure; it is the least protected category of the four, with limited protection against physical threats, single-capacity components, and one distribution path for all equipment without any redundancy measures in place.
• Tier 2 – Redundant Component Site Infrastructure; covers data centers with redundant capacity components and a single distribution path for computer equipment.
• Tier 3 – Concurrently Maintainable Site Infrastructure; a redundant distribution path for equipment combined with redundant capacity components makes this tier far safer than the previous ones and also comes with improvements to physical storage security, as well.
• Tier 4 – Fault Tolerant Site Infrastructure; the highest possible rating for physical security assessment includes redundancy for both capacity components and hardware distribution paths while protecting the software against various failure scenarios with the highest possible level of protection against malicious visitors.

Best practices for Data Center Security Assessment

The entire Data Center Security Assessment process will differ significantly from one case to another, depending on many factors. At the same time, it is still possible to provide a combination of recommendations when performing such an assessment, including multiple factors mentioned below.

1. Create a complete inventory of the entire data center environment, including physical and virtual elements, service accounts, data center applications, etc. Each element has to be assigned a separate rating of importance to normal business functioning. All components that do not contribute to security or the business’s workflow must be eliminated to ensure they cannot be used as a gateway for malicious software and intruders – including applications, service accounts, and even data center elements.
2. Evaluate data center traffic and map it, if possible, to fully understand how information flows to and from your network. This will also help you understand which parts of the system work with sensitive information the most, allowing you to prioritize your resources accordingly.
3. Assess the segmentation of your data center and ensure that communication between different tiers passes through a high-grade firewall. The same evaluation should be done for all users and apps that have access to specific tiers of the data center to ensure that only those who need this access can still have it for security reasons.
4. Elaborate on the previous topic of user evaluation and analyze the security access of every single user (while also creating relevant user groups for easier access control in the future) to ensure they need access to the data center for their proper job functioning. This not only includes the employees of the company itself but also customers, partners, contractors, vendors, etc.
5. Monitoring and continuous evaluation are less about the one-time assessment of the state of the system and more about the ongoing future, but some information about the state of the data center can only be gathered after some time has been spent monitoring and evaluating the overall situation, which is why this point is a part of the list.

Once again, the list itself is not set in stone, and many elements and recommendations are subject to change depending on many factors. Additionally, we can offer some suggestions for data center security in general, which are going to be helpful after the Data Center Security Assessment process is complete:

• Perform regular system evaluations. They do not have to be as thorough and detailed as the one described above. Still, a regular assessment of the overall state of the data center environment would go a long way toward finding out potential vulnerabilities and issues before they can be turned against you.
• Comply with all the regulatory frameworks your business falls under, be it PCI DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, or something more specific. Performing regular compliance audits is also a great idea to avoid potential fines and other issues caused by noncompliance with well-known regulatory frameworks.
• Use various means of protecting the internal network, such as firewalls and various intrusion detection applications.
• Generate a set-in-stone plan for responding to incidents so that all your employees know what to do in an emergency.
• Performing regular employee training is also an advantage in reducing the chances of errors caused by human error – including phishing emails and other methods.
• Implement software for continuous internal monitoring to respond to threats even faster and be more proactive in combating security threats.
• Perform regular backups and encrypt information, both of which are necessary to improve the availability of sensitive information in an emergency.

Backup and encryption processes

All of the recommendations mentioned above are important in their own right, but the last one is one of the most essential for data security in practically any environment, including data centers. This topic also covers encryption because most backup solutions offer data encryption as one of their fundamental capabilities.

The list of potential security, business continuity and sustainability advantages that the correct implementation of a backup and recovery solution can offer to an environment as complex as a data center is surprisingly long, with features such as:

• Data encryption is a common feature in backup solutions. At the very least, they often offer AES-256 encryption and additional features in the same area (in some cases).
• Storage immutability is a fairly popular concept in the backup field. It uses the basic idea of storage that cannot be modified in any way once the data is written to it the first time. It can be achieved either via logical measures or using dedicated hardware with WORM (write-once-read-many) capabilities.
• Air-gapping is an extension of the previous concept that embraces the idea of severing all connections of specific storage with the rest of the infrastructure in order to drastically improve its security. Similar to the previous concept, air-gapping can be performed logically within the system, or it can be done physically, which offers more protection but also brings several issues in terms of accessibility, which is why it is mainly used for the most sensitive data only.
• The 3-2-1 rule is another well-known concept in the backup space, which puts emphasis on the necessity to keep multiple backup copies for the sake of redundancy. The rule itself implies the existence of at least three backup copies that are stored using two different storage types, with one copy being stored in a physically separate location from the rest of the infrastructure (offsite).
• Multi-factor authentication expands upon the well-known 2FA system to improve the security of existing access control measures. The name implies that the end user must present at least two or more authentication credentials to gain access to information.
• Information centralization is also relatively common for backup software. It allows multiple backup and data management operations to be managed using a single-pane-of-glass environment that offers convenient access to everything.

The backup and recovery solutions market is highly competitive and includes hundreds of different solutions. Finding software that can offer all of these advantages while also supporting data centers might initially seem like a challenge. However, that is not the case since solutions such as Bacula Enterprise can offer all of these advantages in the same package.

Bacula Enterprise is a comprehensive backup and recovery platform with many different capabilities. It can work with all kinds of storage types, from traditional media to VMs, SaaS apps, databases, and more. This becomes important to organizations that have a broad and diverse IT environment, as they typically need a single pane of glass backup solution in order to realistically achieve security and regulatory standards and requirements.

Part of being able to meet security and compliance standards partly depends on a backup solution’s monitoring and reporting capabilities. These functionalities are especially strong in Bacula, which allows extensive monitoring and reporting across its entire system, even to the point of allowing highly detailed, specialized and customized reports to fit the needs of its most unique customers.

Bacula also puts a significant emphasis on data security, which is one of the reasons why multiple government-level organizations have chosen Bacula as their backup solution. One of the reasons for this is its unique architecture which makes it extremely difficult for malicious attacks, such as ransomware, to be able to infect the backed up data. For this reason, the largest military alliance in the West has chosen Bacula to protect its data.

Generally speaking, performing a security assessment of a data center can be challenging, and improving upon the existing situation after the assessment is often even more difficult. Luckily, the existence of software such as Bacula allows for most of the operations revolving around information redundancy, compliance and security to be performed from a single solution with a high degree of convenience and user-friendliness.

Conclusion

Data Center Security Assessment evaluates the current state of a data center’s security environment from multiple standpoints. Its importance is rather difficult to overestimate due to how popular and essential data centers are in the modern environment and how often they are targeted maliciously.

The process differs significantly for many situations, and the variety of frameworks a data center must comply with also changes on a case-by-case basis. A rather bare-bones assessment plan can be recommended for most situations, but improving upon it in each situation is far beyond our capabilities.

Adherence to data center security standards can improve the physical and virtual security of the infrastructure while also enhancing data management capabilities across the board and eliminating potentially problematic issues, such as oversharing, overprivilege, and an abundance of access to sensitive information for users who do not require that access to work.

Additionally, following best practices for both data center security assessment and the overall security of this medium can significantly simplify the information management process while improving the environment’s security. Implementing a comprehensive backup solution such as Bacula Enterprise is one of the least problematic options due to its wealth of features in a single solution, combined with the broad number of platforms, databases, virtual machines, containers, cloud environments and storage types it can support.

Overall, we hope that our evaluation of the topic was detailed enough to showcase why it is crucial to assess a data center’s security levels while also pointing out how personalized and case-specific each process will be.