In February, Forsythe Technology, an IT infrastructure integrator, announced in a press release that they are developing a data center “to help enterprises in need of higher-density, private data center suites with dedicated power and cooling infrastructure as well as customizable physical security and operational efficiency options”.
Forsythe vice president of data center development, Steve Harris, said that “by offering each tenant the ability to fully control their suite cooling, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), physical security and operational efficiencies, the new structure will become a tenant’s ‘data center within a data center.’ Tenants will be able to further configure their suites with the security and turn-key convenience found in wholesale data centers and the flexibility and modularity found in retail data centers.”
Forsythe is the first to offer a “retail plus” data center with advanced physical security options. However, many other vendors like Honeywell International, Robert Bosch, Schneider Electric and Siemens AG are also beefing up physical security for their customers in BFSI, Government, and Telecommunication Sectors.
This increasing expenditure on physical security for data center facilities is a huge reason why the Data Center Physical Security Market is expected to post a CAGR of almost 23 percent for the 2013-2018 period.
TechNavio analysts have pinpointed three trends that vendors in the market are doing to doing to improve physical security in data center facilities:
Increasing Adoption of Modern Data Center Designs
With increasing R&D being carried out for enhancing the performance of the data centers, there are many new features such as concrete walls and enclosed infrastructures being implemented which increases the reliability as well as safety of the data center facility. Data center facilities are being built with bomb-resistant concrete walls and laminated glass structures which ensure physical safety of the enclosure. The data center enclosure is also equipped with safety measures such as a buffer zone from the site for vehicle parking, and high security vehicle entry points which ensure safety to a larger extent.
Increasing Adoption of Two-Step Verification for Security
Many new data center facilities are being equipped with security systems which use two factors to authenticate access into the data center facility. A generic trend is to include retina scan or fingerprint scan as an additional factor along with the card access to authenticate the personnel. Data centers are also being equipped with tracking systems which can track the location of any person within the data center facility. Centralized management of permission for access inside the data center facility enables efficient management and monitoring of people within the data centers.
Introduction of Access Control Systems and Physical Intrusion Prevention
Physical intrusion into the data center facilities is an increasing threat for enterprises and data center service providers. There are a number of measures and solutions being procured by the data center service providers to prevent physical intrusion into the facility. For example, data center facilities are often isolated from an enterprise’s corporate office, which ensures a lower threat of external personnel entering the data center facility.
Data center physical security vendors are also developing various solutions such as turnstiles and mantrap systems which ensure that no unauthorized personnel enter the data center facility. Further, the data center computing and storage equipment is segmented into multiple blocks within the data center facility which makes it easy to track the access of any persons to such equipment.
