Data Centers

Properly protecting, managing, governing, and using data is crucial for the success and profitability of modern businesses. An organization’s visibility into and control over sensitive data is essential for regulatory compliance and business success. The data center plays a significant role in hosting and providing an environment for deploying data management solutions. It includes components for networking, computation, and storage.

Designing, constructing, and maintaining these facilities adhere to industry standards to ensure the security and availability of data and applications. While cloud environments offer numerous benefits, such as greater agility, efficiency, flexibility, and cost savings, they are not perfect solutions for corporate data centers.

Organizations can have greater control and visibility over the infrastructure hosting their data and applications through on-premises infrastructure. To balance the advantages provided by on-premises and cloud-based data centers, a hybrid data center model combines a mix of on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure. This model takes advantage of orchestration, which enables data and applications to be shared between cloud-based and on-prem infrastructures over the network.

Cyberattacks Security Protection for Data Centers

Data Center Attack Surface in OT Security Graph

Common Attacks and Vulnerabilities in Data Centers

Data centers are vulnerable to various attacks, such as DDoS, ransomware, external access, application, internal, and phishing attacks.

DDos

Cyber attackers and hackers have been using DDoS attacks, or Distributed Denial of Service attacks, as a popular method for decades. These attacks involve overwhelming a targeted server with a massive amount of traffic, consuming all available bandwidth, and causing server access disruption for legitimate users.

Cyber attackers and hackers have launched major DDoS attacks on small and large companies like Google, Amazon Web Services, OVH, and GitHub in the past decade. Cisco's analysis reveals that over 10 million DDoS attacks were recorded in 2020 alone. Cisco also forecasts a significant increase in DDoS cyber-attacks in the future, with an estimated rise of 100% to about 15.4 million by 2023, causing concern for all data center owners.

Poorly secured IoT devices are manufactured daily, making it easy for hackers to exploit data centers and network servers. Without proper security measures, the situation can quickly turn from good to alarming within seconds.

Ransomware

Ransomware attacks are another major concern for data center owners. The infamous "WannaCry" ransomware attack, which affected almost 200,000 computers across hundreds of countries, is still fresh in many people's minds. In a ransomware attack, malicious software is installed on a computer, gaining access to all files and folders on the device and using encryption to seize the data.

These attacks can propagate through various means, including email attachments, pop-ups, and more. Once the attacker has taken over the system, they demand a ransom in cryptocurrency, maintaining the anonymity of the hacker, in exchange for the decryption key.

External Access

Hackers can exploit Cloud Access Security Brokers or third-party DNS servers to gain access to a data center, and overlooking external services can have serious consequences. Unfortunately, even trusted DNS service providers like Dyn have become victims of attacks, causing service disruption for many big enterprises in the past.

Application Attacks

Hackers can initiate application attacks by infecting or compromising an application that provides the service of a data center, such as a control panel or customer dashboard, causing service unavailability and severe reputation loss for the data center provider. Hackers find this method more convenient since it requires minimal resources compared to a DDoS cyber-attack.

Internal Access

The most significant security threat can come from an attack by a data center's employees. Employees who have access to data center servers can abuse their privilege to cause damage, making insider attacks the most dangerous. However, many data center providers are unprepared to handle such attacks.

Phishing Attacks

Attackers activate phishing attacks by sending messages, emails, or websites that impersonate authentic sources to people with credentials. If the attacker successfully impersonates an authentic source, the person may willingly release their credentials, thinking the message is from a trusted source. Once the attacker has the credentials, they can easily access the target server and execute their intended actions.

Blastwave's Cybersecurity Solution for Data Centers

At Blastwave, we provide a comprehensive data center security solution to protect against various cyber threats. Our solution is designed to identify and prevent attacks, such as DDoS attacks, application attacks, phishing attacks, and others, from compromising your infrastructure and data.We have BlastShield, which can help the data center industry by providing advanced threat protection against cyber attacks, including DDoS attacks, application attacks, phishing attacks, and more.

BlastShield's software-defined perimeter (SDP) solution creates a secure network environment that is vendor, protocol, and network agnostic, removing the dependency on vendors and putting data center operators in control of security. Our simplified and intuitive security orchestration replaces the complex design, configuration, and management of layered network technologies.

By leveraging BlastShield's OT cybersecurity solution, data centers can mitigate security risks, reduce security costs, and minimize operational downtime, allowing them to focus on their core business operations without worrying about cyber threats.

Data Center Industry Brief

Data centers are critical infrastructures for businesses and organizations, providing the backbone for the digital economy. Cyber attacks on data centers can result in data theft, downtime, financial loss, and reputational damage for the affected organizations. Additionally, the highly interconnected nature of data center environments means that a successful cyber attack on one facility can have cascading effects across the entire network.

Download Solution Brief

Image of Data Center, part of OT security