In today’s digital-driven business landscape, data flow is essential for the efficient operation of modern organisations. As a result, it is equally crucial to understand how and where your business data is stored.
Data centres worldwide hold vast amounts of sensitive information. As cyber threats evolve in sophistication and scale, the job of securing these data centres, whether physical or virtual servers, is becoming increasingly difficult. However, as a critical national infrastructure (CNI) holding high volumes of sensitive information, including personal, financial, and business-critical information, data centres are an increasingly attractive target for cyber criminals. From ransomware attacks and insider threats to DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) and regulatory complexities organisations must adopt a proactive and multi-layered security approach.
Securing On and Off-Premise Data Centers
The biggest danger for most organisations is threat actors finding vulnerabilities in the virtual environment or infrastructure. Organisations must work to understand the risk to their data centre, and implement robust security measures to safeguard all their on-premise and off-premise infrastructure. For those managing their own physical on-prem data centres, security should be enforced at multiple levels, including:
- Physical measures: Implement authentication, surveillance systems and on-site security to restrict unauthorised access and minimise the likelihood of physical breaches.
- Network segmentation: Create and maintain physically or logically separate networks, with no connectivity between them to reduce the risk of data breaches.
- Endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions: Advanced EDR tools provide continuous network monitoring, anomaly detection, and real-time threat response, protecting these critical systems from cyber-attacks.
For businesses relying on cloud and hybrid environments, securing off-prem infrastructure requires a different set of strategies:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and encryption: Enforcing MFA adds an additional security layer by requiring at least two verification factors for access. Even if one authentication factor is compromised, attackers still face significant barriers to entry. Make sure your security policy includes MFA for all employees as enforcing MFA for all users ensures that only authorised individuals can access the data.
- Implement strict access controls: Implementing role-based access control ensures employees can only access data relevant to their job functions. Access permissions should be updated as roles change.
- Security for remote workers: Employees accessing the network and environment from remote locations must use secured devices with endpoint protection software to prevent cyber threats and unauthorised access.
- Employee training: Conduct these regularly to educate employees on identifying and responding to cyber threats. Staff should be equipped to recognise phishing attempts, social engineering tactics, and suspicious activity.
How to Ensure Regulatory Compliance
As CNI, data centres must meet and follow regulatory frameworks to protect sensitive data, mitigate cyber risks, and ensure business continuity for third-party organisations. These include:
- UK general data protection regulation (GDPR), which outlines the key principles, rights, and obligations for most processing of personal data in the UK. It has a broad scope, also providing clear guidelines for data breach notifications.
- Network and information systems regulations 2018 (NIS) are designed to enhance cyber security across essential services. They require operators of critical infrastructure, including data centres, to implement strong security measures, calling for risk management strategies to protect systems from cyber threats.
- Privacy and electronic communications regulations (PECR) compliment the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act, setting out more specific privacy rights on electronic communications. This includes regulations on marketing communications, cookies, and data storage. Data centres handling electronic communications must comply with PECR.
- ISO/IEC 27001 – while this is not a legal requirement, it is a globally recognised standard for information security management. Many data centres adopt this framework to ensure the security of sensitive data through an Information Security Management System (ISMS).
These frameworks establish baseline security standards for data storage, access control, encryption, and incident response, helping organisations maintain a secure and resilient infrastructure.
Transitioning to a Zero-Trust Architecture
Zero-trust is another strategy to consider in your data centre security strategy. Unlike traditional perimeter security approaches, modern zero trust security architectures recognise trust as a vulnerability. This model assumes that no user, device, or system should be trusted by default, whether inside or outside the network. Instead, every access request is verified continuously based on strict identity authentication, access controls, and real-time monitoring. However, transitioning to a zero-trust model requires a company cultural shift in how security is perceived and managed.
By adopting continuous verification, strict access control, and proactive threat detection, together with strict regulatory frameworks, and a shift toward a zero-trust model, data centres can significantly boost security resilience and reduce the risk of cyber breaches.
