Secure Next Gen Data Centers
Firms need to rebuild security structure to fit BYOD...
40 | SECURITY
The modern data center has truly become the home of everything. We’re seeing entire businesses born from a cloud model as executives take direct advantage of new data center resources. Today’s data centers are moving at a faster rate. Moving fast on data acquisition and moving fast on acquiring new networks. All this is creating a new breed of data centers that need security more than they need anything else. Increasing data traffic and network connections, virtualization of the data centers, increasing cyber-attacks with physical attacks and insider threats are driving this market. Let’s take a deeper look.
Consider this: The global data center security market was estimated to be $6.46 billion in 2013 and is expected to grow to $13.77 billion in 2018. This represents a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.3 percent from 2013 to 2018. Currently, BFSI is well ahead being the largest adopter for data center security solutions followed by Telecom and IT.
Even though there is a need for integrated physical as well as logical security solutions for data center security, both the solutions need to be independently implemented to secure the facility. Major companies are trying to integrate both the security solutions on a single platform for ease of implementation and to reduce the total cost of ownership while ensuring security compliance and regulatory policies.
The data center security solutions and service providers are looking forward to gain a better competitive advantage in this growing market, thereby creating new solutions and intelligent and integrated security platforms for securing the data centers. These solutions providers are enabling organizations reduce the risk of improper access by privileged users, through either careless or malicious actions by governing employee and partner access. They also help ensure that your confidential information is properly classified and protected from improper use or disclosure, thereby helping you avoid the reputational damage that can result from information theft.
With the blurring of boundaries between physical, virtual and public/private cloud, organizations are on an evolutionary curve towards next-generation data centres. Resultantly, they will face the reality of securing data that moves between server, storage, and networking resources (physical and virtual) of next-generation data centres.
There have been other technologies that have promoted this increased usage of data center platforms and security. More resource availability, datacenter optimizations, and of course mobility are all impacting the direct boom in data center security demand. Looking ahead, what are some of the major technological solutions that will impact data center and security? What are the key trends that will change the way a data center delivers content? How can data centers continue to meet the demands of both the users and the business? Let’s find out!
Over the next few years, many of the traditional cloud platforms we have come to know will evolve. Already, we are seeing new ways to utilize cloud traffic
and distribute data. The next-generation cloud will allow for greater levels of interconnectivity, optimized resource utilization, and creating a more powerful environment for the end-user. As more devices connect and more content is delivered – web-based communication will grow to become even more important, especially in terms of security.
Today, hybrid cloud as a technology is getting pretty hot. With so much cloud adoption happening, organizations need a good way to interconnect and secure a wide variety of resources. A hybrid cloud is no longer defined by a simple connection between a private and public data center. Now, data centers can interconnect with resources spanning a variety of environments. This means that pieces can be in a private, public or “as-a-Service” delivery. All of these components can be connected together to bring home a powerful and secure hybrid cloud platform. More services, many more users and a more interconnected world will prove to be the driving force behind a hybrid cloud platform.
Moreover, the world of Apps and APIs is completely changing, so is the mechanism that allows these applications to interconnect and function in today’s IT world. The amazing thing here is that applications are becoming completely hardware agnostic. They aim to deliver clear usability and data. The future of the application world will revolve around constant connectivity, ease-of-use, and the power of the data center. New types of APIs are also allowing applications to access key resources much faster. This type of granular interconnect creates better and more agile cloud-centric applications. Remember, all of these future cloud applications reside within the data center increasing the relevance of a wellplanned data center-security strategy.
BYOD, another booming IT trend, now needs to be looked at from different dimensions like data loss prevention, network access control, internal intrusion prevention systems, authentication system, internal firewalls, securing Wi-Fi etc. A smarter enterprise thus seeks a single security solution for issues related to BYOD. Firms need to rebuild security
“The growth of mobile devices and apps in the enterprise is blurring the lines between personal and corporate data and leading to new challenges for enterprises.”
structure to fit BYOD whilst being watchdogs of IT security and compliance.
If you’re not ready for the mobility revolution it’s time to get on this very fast-moving train. Users, devices and data are becoming a lot more mobile. Users are consuming information in entirely new ways and your organization must be ready to facilitate these demands. This means managing mobile resources, users, and data center resources. Whether these are mobile application servers, virtual hosts, or entire racks dedicated to a mobile user platform – be ready to accommodate the new way that users compute.
The growth of mobile devices and apps in the enterprise is blurring the lines between personal and corporate data and leading to new challenges for enterprises. Much like the mobility revolution, the content that will be delivered to these devices will have to be optimized as well. On top of it all, maintaining device agnosticism is crucial. Users want access to their applications and data regardless of OS or hardware. This is why new types of applications and rich content will be delivered to a variety of users located all over the world. Intelligent data center automation controls will optimize the user’s connection by creating automated experience orchestration. That is, engines will dynamically define the user experience based on device, connection, location, security, and other factors. This is the future of how users will consume their information.
To combat the threat of advanced malware, many organizations are relying on their legacy security products or using stand-alone malware products that are not integrated with the rest of the environment. Hence, there is a need to adopt advanced threat defence solutions to respond to attacks faster and seamlessly move from analysis to protection and resolution.
The next couple of years will certainly be interesting. We’ll see more cloud-centric workloads deployed as the modern user becomes even more mobile. There is more big data and business intelligence, we have a lot more mobility on the user front, and we are certainly seeing a lot more data center convergence take place. At the heart of it all – where so many new technologies and solutions live – sits the all-important data center and creating a more agile, flexible, scalable, and costefficient data center-security strategy is a transformation that CIOs must strive to conquer.
Data center will continue to serve a critical role in the evolution of IT. With business complexities increasing due to big data and its complications, we will see even more data center automation, greater distributed technologies and even the utilization of intelligent robotics. The need is to relook at appropriate strategies of IT infrastructure in order to gain greater efficiency, agility, and business continuity. One thing will always be true – it’ll be up to the IT professional, cloud architect, or technology executive to utilize these powerful tools to align business goals with IT solutions.