How and why do I need to monitor my data center and network closets for unauthorized access to racks and equipment?

We hear about it on the news every day.  Target has a data security breach which compromised 40 million customer records. Craft and hobby store, Michaels, has 2.6 million records stolen. The University of Maryland had 300,000 records stolen.  20,000 emergency department patient records are stolen from Stanford Hospital. There is an endless list of data breaches for nearly every type of business entity.  

Physical security has converged with cyber security.

IT professionals are more interested in locking down and monitoring equipment racks to secure hardware integrity, and keep rogue laptops and removable storage devices away from the network and sensitive data.  For example, think about how Edward Snowden stole information from the NSA via unprotected computer hardware (story link here). Sometimes equipment racks are located in dedicated IT closets and sometimes in data centers. Also cause for concern is the amount of IT hardware and infrastructure housed in closets that are shared and accessed by personnel from more than just the IT department.  We will discuss several options for securing data racks and closets. 

But first, let’s talk about why an IT professional might want to secure and monitor the data equipment separately from the building’s general intrusion detection system. Keep reading here...