Data centers in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Jersey City, Baltimore, and DC have a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of sensitive data in the Mid-Atlantic region, and plenty of companies in the public and private sector rely on them.
Data centers spend a lot of time protecting their client’s data, but what do they do to protect themselves?
Data center security is important. Security centers that want to succeed need to think beyond the security needs of the companies they serve, and how to protect themselves from potential breaches and problems.
If you’re interested in running a secure data center, you’ve come to the right place. Read our 8 essential tips for having a secure data center.
1. Update Your Control and Access Settings
Do you know what happens to an employee’s access to data once they leave the company? If you think that the security process begins and ends once you take away their email address and keycard, you’re not handling security well.
It’s surprisingly easy and common for old employees to access sensitive data. They may have memorized passwords or could have taken the time to download important information.
Have a secure process in place to make sure that it’s very difficult for old employees to access work-related data. Sometimes simply updating a password can save you from disaster.
2. Make Security in Focus in All Practices
Data centers in Wilmington, Baltimore, DC, Jersey City, and Philadelphia are designed to keep sensitive information safe for other businesses. But what are you doing to protect your own company from security vulnerabilities?
It’s so easy to employees to misplace a keycard or give an access code to the wrong person. That’s why it’s important for everyone at the organization to keep security at the forefront of everything they do.
Security vulnerabilities can occur in the way your employees enter a building, answer their emails, or invite people to see the office.
Take time to talk to your employees about the importance of total security, and train them in best security practices in all of their work-related actions.
3. Address Problems Promptly
If your response team isn’t on the case as soon as you get a security alert, you need to rethink the way you run your data center.
You don’t have time to waste once you realize that there’s a problem. System vulnerabilities can easily lead to larger problems. This is why a prompt response is so important when you’re dealing with data center security.
Having a reliable alert system in place is important, but training your employees the right way to respond to it is even more critical.
Response plans should be a core priority for your team. Take time to sit down with leaders to plot out the best way to handle any kind of alerts or irregularities. Then make sure that your team knows the proper response protocol.
4. Know Your Potential Weak Points
Take some time to think about all of the entry points a hacker can get into your most sensitive data.
Could they gain access through a weak password portal on your end? Do you have cameras and physical security around the doors? Are there a lot of master accounts that have access to all of your important information?
Take time to examine your weak points, and find ways to increase security around them.
5. Research Your Employees
Your employees play a huge role in the security of your data center. If someone doesn’t have the right training or moral compass, you could find yourself with a lot of potential problems.
The front desk person may not work with employee data, but they have a lot of access to it. Carelessly watching videos on malware heavy sites or making purchases with the company credit card on shady sites could put your data at risk.
You could end up hiring a wannabe cybercriminal that’s eager to learn how to scam credit card numbers. If you aren’t careful, they could end up testing out their skills on your clients or causing trouble when they’re let go.
This is why it’s important to only hire people you can truly depend on for your company. Everyone that works for you could be an invaluable asset, or they could be a big security liability.
6. Read Up on Industry Compliance
You may be up to date on the latest security practices, but could you say that you’re 100% compliant in all of the industries you serve?
Data security compliance is important in a lot of industries. You’ll want to make sure that you’re following all of the needed protocol for the clients that you serve.
Do you work with a lot of clients in the healthcare and medical industry?
You need to make sure that all of your practices are HIPAA compliant. Protected health information (PHI) is serious, and if you aren’t in compliance with their current data standards you could end up causing a lot of trouble for your clients.
Is a lot of your business in the retail and e-commerce space? Then you need to make sure that everyone on your team is aware of the latest payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS).
A lot of data security companies find that it’s useful to have someone on staff that can solely focus on industry-specific compliance.
If you tend to work with clients in a certain industry, it could be worth it to find a consultant that knows about all of the data regulations within it.
7. Choose the Right Living Space for Your Data
The way you choose to store the data you work with can have a significant effect on your security.
People that go down the self-hosted route will have a lot of control over the data. While this may seem ideal, you’ll also be on your own in case anything goes wrong.
You’ll need to implement your own fail-safe systems, and have a way to have an emergency response team that’s available 24 hours a day, including nights, weekends, and holidays.
A cloud hosting method can make it easier for your client and your team to manage and access data. But it also comes with its own security vulnerabilities.
It’s also possible that you may want to use a combination of both. Regardless of the method you choose, make sure that you take time to think about the risks both can present.
8. Don’t Forget About Physical Threats
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about security loopholes and employees, but there’s still another significant threat to the security of your data: the physical world.
What would happen to your client’s data if a pipe broke in your office and the server room got flooded? Do you have a natural disaster response plan in place in case something happens at your office?
Thinking about physical security is important for data centers. Always make sure you have a secure backup plan in place anything physically happens to your storage devices.
Going Beyond Data Center Security
True data center security in Philadelphia, Wilmington, Jersey City, Baltimore, and DC comes from a variety of places.
You need to not just make sure that your data stays secure, you also need to think about physical and employee-related concerns.
Do you want to bring true security to your data center? You should consider getting help from a professional.
We’re here to answer all of your security-related questions. Contact us today so we can get you the information you need!