This white paper by our MD Andrew Billingham is a must read for managers of small data centres as it addresses the issues involved in physical protection of valuable or sensitive data, right down to the level of a single server cabinet.
Andrew asks the question: “How secure is secure?”
According to the most recent studies, only about 20 percent of data centres are secure, leaving an overwhelming 80 percent at risk. It is likely that small centres are at the high end of this range. Fortunately there is wide commonality among Data Privacy Directives in that when boiled down to their essence, data privacy rules and regulations all seek to accomplish the same thing. Government regulations and non-government standards invariably ask four basic questions regarding access to sensitive information:
• Do you have safeguards in place to control access to sensitive data?
• Are you able to continuously monitor who is accessing sensitive data?
• Are you alerted in real-time when information is being accessed without authorization?
• Can you produce an audit trail showing who has accessed sensitive data and when they accessed it?
It’s important to remember that “access” within the context of these questions means physical access as well as network access, and that specific requirements for controlling physical access exist in all rules and regulations concerning the protection of private or sensitive information.
The Cabinet Sentry with biometric processing at the cabinet handle is reviewed as a best practice solution.
The full white paper can be downloaded at www.emkablog.co.uk/cabinet-sentry.
