THE NEED FOR PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL CONVERGENCE
NETWORK AND CYBERSECURITY
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“ Power systems , which happen to be the most critical infrastructure of a data center are sadly the most overlooked architecture by Cybersecurity teams ”
— Cybersecurity Insiders
ture by Cybersecurity teams .” Commonly , power systems are “ protected ” from failure by redundant backup systems and physical security . While this is an effective way to prevent uptime disruption , these measures often aren ’ t enough to stave off targeted threats . The software controlling these systems is often vulnerable to cyber attack , particularly through IoT , as these systems are often heavily reliant on smart sensor networks .
So , a malicious cyber actor or a military agency of a nation can easily take control of the device and interrupt the power to a data center or a specific server on a network- eventually leading to a business disruption ”, said Bob
Pruett , Security Field Solutions Executive at SHI International . Data centres looking to resist external threats should take care to protect their physical systems from digital attacks if they wish to avoid these kinds of disruptions .
THE NEED FOR PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL CONVERGENCE
According to Scott Borg , Director of the U . S . Cyber Consequences Unit , “ As long as organisations treat their physical and cyber domains as separate , there is little hope of securing either one . The convergence of cyber and physical security has already occurred at the technical level . It is long overdue at the organisational level .”
The separation between the cameras , motion sensors , locks and other physical elements of a data centre ’ s security architecture , and its firewall , encryption protocols and other digital defences creates a glaring vulnerability in a disturbing proportion of networks . “ Right now , most US companies rely on patchwork systems , even to handle their most sensitive data and functions ,” said Brivo CEO Steve Van Till in an
AUGUST 2020