8 Best Practices for Server Room Security

No matter what business you are in, one of the most important places in your offices is always your server room. Server rooms lie at the heart of any office building. All data to and from the entire office flows through this room. Any breach into this area could cause irreparable harm to the business, necessitating server room security to protect it from all kinds of threats.

Server Room Security Challenges

A server room faces multiple security threats that need to be protected against to establish a safer working environment. We will see in brief what these challenges are.

1. Break-in

These rooms don’t just hold expensive equipment but also store sensitive data for the business. Access to these rooms is usually restricted to a few individuals and is a target for a lot of people with malicious intents. Any breach in access can lead to severe harm for the business.

2. High Temperatures

Server rooms are closed rooms with no windows and doors that are always closed. They house heavy computing devices and other equipment which generate a lot of heat. They rely only on air conditioners to regulate the temperature. Given the nature of the equipment, high temperatures must be avoided at all costs as it can lead to permanent damage to the equipment and even lead to fires.

3. Equipment failure

Equipment that is housed in server rooms needs to operate at its optimum at all times. Even the slightest failure can lead to office-wide downtime and business interruption. It is, therefore, crucial to monitor the health of these machines and identify faults early on before failure.

4. Vibration

Vibrations in a building is often considered a trivial matter and not given much thought. However, they are a severe hazard to your system. They can disturb rapidly spinning hard drives, which can be destroyed with the tiniest of scratches occurring due to unwanted motion.

8 Best Practices for Server Room Security

1. Use LHT sensors to monitor room temperature:

Light, Humidity, and Temperature sensors are an essential part of a server room security system. They help keep tabs on the temperature and humidity levels in the server room and trigger an alert when the levels cross a certain threshold. This helps prevent unfortunate situations and helps act early on. For example, the moment the humidity level exceeds its limit, the person in charge of the server room can prevent the chances of corrosion and short-circuits that occur in high humidity.

2. Access control:

One of the most crucial security measures for any server room is to have a server room access control. These are devices that are used on doors to control entry and exit from the server room & monitor those entering. They can use biometric measures or key cards to identify a person and determine whether they can be given access or not. Using keyless locks integrated with a mobile application gives you accurate insights into who accessed the door, at what time & sends alerts every time a wrong OTP is entered.

This way you can restrict entry of unauthorized members into the server room & simultaneously maintain logs of each entry and exit by authorized employees.

3. IP cameras:

Server room cameras are multipurpose devices and provide a lot of different functions.
● The foremost reason to have IP cameras is to monitor the happenings inside and outside your server rooms. They help you keep an eye on all the activities of the employees in the room.

● Secondly, they can also be used to support the various sensors and access control devices by verifying the alerts raised by them. For instance, If an access control shows forced or unauthorized entry, a nearby IP camera can be used to confirm the identity of the person.

● Thirdly, cloud camera surveillance can be backed by AI and ML algorithms to provide smart features like identifying suspicious behavior inside and around the server room. For example, the IP camera can automatically detect if a person is loitering around the entry for the server room.

4. Energy control:

LHT sensors as described earlier can help monitor parameters like temperature and humidity. However, they are only capable of monitoring and not controlling. Energy control systems can work with these sensors and maintain the temperature and humidity levels. For example, If the temperature sensor suggests the levels are increasing, the system can automatically switch on additional air conditioning and once the temperature is under control, they can switch it off. Not only does this help regulate the environment in the room but it also brings down energy consumption to a minimum.

5. Motion Sensor:

Server room security systems equipped with intelligent motion sensors can sense even the minutest of vibrations around the equipment in the server rooms and immediately notify concerned officials of the same. This ensures timely health checks of the equipment and significantly reduces the threat of damage.

6. 24*7 Monitoring:

Server rooms are operational 24*7 and thus need to be monitored round-the-clock. A cloud camera surveillance for server room security system can operate continuously, day and night, at equal efficiency to help safeguard against all possible threats. These systems are of maximum importance during night-time when there is minimal staff, and they are at their most vulnerable.

7. Real-time notifications:

Due to the sensitive nature of the server rooms and the importance that they hold for any business, it is vital to receive the update of any alert or threat as soon as possible, and a smart server room security system is capable of doing just that. It can alert the command center almost immediately they detect any abnormality where the threat can be verified, and the concerned authorities are notified instantaneously.

8. Accessibility:

The unified platform allows you to access and review data from all the sensors and cameras on one integrated cloud-based platform. You can easily search for any particular piece of recording based on time and date. You can also compare data of different facilities on a single platform with smart insights like energy usage patterns.

Conclusion

Smart devices like IP cameras, sensors, and access control systems work together to make security systems capable of protecting your server rooms from all possible security threats and safeguarding your business. It should be a top priority for all businesses to find the best possible system as per their needs and requirements and adopt them.
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