Data Center Handbook, 2nd Edition

20CYBERSECURITY AND DATA CENTERS

Robert Hunter¹ and Joseph Weiss²

¹ AlphaGuardian, San Ramon, California, United States of America

² Applied Control Solutions, Cupertino, California, United States of America

20.1 INTRODUCTION

Data centers occupy an increasingly valuable place in the lives of everyone. This is true because every request for data from a search engine, every piece of music played, and most all of the digital life that each person leads come to us via data centers.

The constant need to access digital information creates the requirement for data centers with the highest uptime possible (Fig. 20.1). Because of this, data centers are designed to have their Information Technology (IT) systems and their supporting Operational Technology (OT) systems operate at 99.999% or higher availability. This means that IT networks and OT electrical, mechanical, and security systems are designed with redundancy to ensure failover options are available in the event of the disruption of a major system. Large sums are spent to ensure redundant electrical and mechanical system paths are available in a data center and, yet, a single click of the mouse from a hacker can bring down an entire data center for hours.

FIGURE 20.1 The foundation of data center operational technology.

Source: Courtesy of AlphaGuardian.

In this light, network engineers have been particularly sensitive to ...