Safeguards for a data center

Going by the trend, data centers turn out to be a long term beneficial asset for almost any software company in India. Data center is a facility to house an organization’s critical systems. These critical systems are made up of computer hardware, an operating system, tape drives, servers, applications and many more.

Major threats are to all such data centers are:

• Natural threats
• Man-made (Terrorist incidents, riots, theft etc.)
• Environmental (extreme temperatures or humidity)
• Loss of utilities such as electrical power or telecommunications

As a part of safeguarding the data center possessed by any ASP DOT NET software company in India, many actions are proposed over the time. Some of them include

• Installation of physical authentication devices such as card-key readers, biometric devices, traditional key locks, device logs management which holds important information such as user identification, time and place of the access attempt and success or failure of the access attempt.
• Review exterior doors and walls to determine if they protect data centers facilities adequately. Raised floors and drop ceilings (ventilation ducts and power and network cables) Man Traps (Two locking doors with a corridor) are preventive measures that can be applied to data centers.
• Heating, ventilations and air conditioning systems can be install to maintain constant temperatures within the data center.
• Power Continuity checks such as two or more power stations, ground to earth, battery backup system (UPS) and generators can be kept as a backup plans.
• Detective measures and safeguards can be exercised by c# software companies in India such as physical intrusion, risk of fire, water alarm, humidity alarm and surveillance Systems, fire suppression systems.
• Logical measure such as adherence to licensing requirements, version maintenance, application of patches, network security, user account maintenance, access controls and maintenance of sensitive user accounts can prove to be an integral part of a data center.
• Review of data center building orientation, neighborhood characteristics and exterior lighting to identify facility related risks. Reviewing building orientation comprises how far from the boundary, are there barriers and how is the flooring of data center. Neighborhood characteristics consist of who are the neighbors, are they in close proximity and what sort of business they do. Exterior Lighting is vital because proper lighting deters crime and loitering around the facility.
• Research the data center location for natural and environmental hazards and to determine the distance to emergency services. Floods, severe weather and transportation related accidents can destroy or severely damage a data center. A common safeguard is flood elevations – Single story data center that is 5ft or so above ground. However there are some weather and earth movement threats that are not controllable by humans. Transportation related Hazards – Planes (do crash), trains (derail), automobiles must are also some unavoidable accidents. Yet, local crime rate – (High crime area there is higher risk of theft and other crimes) proximity to emergency services – police stations, hospitals and fire-stations could be measured and appropriate reactive actions plans can be prepared for such unwanted accidental scenarios.

IT operations are a fundamental aspect of most software companies in India. One of the key concerns is business continuity; companies depend on their information systems to run their operations. If a system becomes inaccessible, company operations may be compromised or stopped entirely. It is crucial to provide a reliable infrastructure for IT operations, in order to diminish any chance of disruption. Information security is also a concern, and for this purpose a data center has to propose a secure environment which decreases the chances of a security breach. A data center must therefore keep great standards for convincing the integrity and functionality of its hosted computer environment.