What is data center security?

The underlying goal of data center security is to preserve the confidentiality, integrity and availability of stored data in order to maintain data privacy and avoid business interruption. 

Threats against data centers can include intentional malicious attacks, natural disasters and unintentional or otherwise accidental incidents. Therefore, a comprehensive data center security strategy covers all aspects of the facility, including network hardware, power systems, servers and the physical building itself. 

People and businesses generate and use an enormous amount of data that grows exponentially every day, especially with the rise of data-centric technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

From sensitive personal information like bank accounts and health records, to critical business intellectual property (IP), high-level state secrets and even texts and emails, data centers can house a vast array of valuable or simply private information. Unfortunately, this fact makes data centers a juicy target for cybercriminals and vulnerable points of possible failure that must be protected. 

In the event of a data center outage, critical business operations, applications and services can be disrupted, leading to financial losses that increase with every passing minute of downtime. Worse yet, a downed data center can lead to dangerous situations for critical services such as healthcare, utilities, transportation and infrastructure.   

While things like fires and floods can certainly result in downtime and data loss, the greatest threats to data centers are targeted attacks. Insider threats can abuse their access privileges to misuse company data, while external threats can break into systems and wreak havoc.

Data centers can contain hundreds of thousands of both physical and virtual servers, each a potential target for hackers, requiring tailored security policies. 

The critical nature of data center security can be understood in terms of four key pillars:

Data centers store valuable digital assets ranging from corporate IP to customer credit card information. Hackers and other cybercriminals would love to get their hands on this information, which can be ransomed back to the original owners or otherwise exploited for personal gain. 

Backups and data redundancies help ensure that the most important data is never fully lost or inaccessible even during times of partial or total outages. 

Relatedly, data center security helps ensure business continuity even during times of strain. Secure data centers can provide fast and fluid data access to keep business moving and avoid shutdowns during day-to-day operations—and even in the event of certain localized cyberattacks or natural disasters. 

If, for instance, a bank branch in New York suffers from flooding that destroys local onsite servers and data, that data can be restored from backups stored at a secure off-site data center located miles away from the incident. 

Data center security also plays a pivotal role in maintaining regulatory compliance. Regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) govern how businesses and organizations are permitted to collect and handle sensitive data. These laws enforce strict guidelines, and in some instances weighty penalties, to help ensure that customer data is protected. If a data security breach occurs, organizations can be held liable for mishandling data. 

From fires and floods to physical intruders and remote attackers, data centers must be prepared to address various threats and challenges. 

While the specific cost of business downtime or damaged consumer relationships can be hard to calculate, the 2025 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report presents some estimates. The global average cost of a breach is USD 4.44 million, and the US average is USD 10.4 million.  

Some of the top challenges and threats facing data centers include:

Data centers must secure their boundaries from people seeking to gain unauthorized access either physically or virtually. Data centers are known targets for cybercriminals, bad actors and even terrorists who might steal, ransom or destroy the critical data stored within.

While a hacker might target financial information such as credit card numbers and banking passwords, nation-state adversaries might go after even more dangerous data, such as state secrets or top-secret defense documents. Cybercriminals might target data centers remotely or seek to gain local access by trespassing on site.

As bad as it would be for an unauthorized user to gain access to the data stored within a data center, it would be even worse for that data to be stolen. Theft of equipment can result in suspended service for a data center and its clients. Theft of data can result in business interruptions or worse scenarios, such as extortion, identity theft and more. 

While intentional attacks on data centers pose the biggest threat, fires, floods, storms and other natural disasters also pose significant risk to data centers. These centers house sensitive equipment that requires large amounts of electricity and generates much more heat than a typical office building. 

Physical threats and natural disasters affect more than just the data stored within data centers. They impact the hardware and infrastructure itself. They also threaten business continuity if data backups and recovery plans are stored within the same facility and multiple servers are affected during an incident. Data center hardware can be costly and time-consuming to replace, requiring precise configuration and calibration. In the event of a fire, flood or other disaster, an affected data center might be offline for months or even years.

Data centers are built to house large networks of connected computing and storage resources, including routers, switches, servers and more.   

To protect these systems, data center security teams must be able to identify and remediate vulnerabilities before they can present a problem. They must also be able to monitor existing security measures and respond quickly to issues that do arise, such as data leaks and ransomware infections.  

To defend against these threats, many data centers adhere to the data center security requirements outlined by the Open Compute Project (OCP). The OCP is a nonprofit organization committed to facilitating and sharing data center product designs and best practices. Over 400 companies participate, including IBM, Meta, Intel, Nokia, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Cisco, Goldman Sachs and more. 

The OCP data center security requirements are:

1. Deter: Data centers must do everything in their ability to discourage cybercriminals and threat actors from initiating attacks.
   
   
2. Detect: Data center security operations must use all tools available to identify potential threats in real time. The damage done during a security breach can increase with every passing moment. Detecting a breach as quickly as possible is critical for data center security.
   
   
3. Delay: In the event of a security breach, data centers ought to employ various techniques to delay the immediate identification and location of sensitive data. Delay tactics create barriers between entry points and critical data assets.  
   
   
4. Respond: In the event of a security incident, data center security professionals must mount a quick and calculated response to protect assets and regain secure control over data. 

To meet requirements such as the OCP’s, organizations implement various data center security tools and technologies. Security measures for a data center can vary depending on its location, intended use and other factors. However, most modern data centers will incorporate a few table-stakes measures for safety and compliance. 

For example, intrusion detection systems monitor network traffic for unauthorized access, while alarm systems secure physical locations. Other types of data center physical security, such as fire detection and suppression systems, extend defensive controls beyond the threat of bad actors. These measures safeguard data center infrastructure against natural disasters and other accidents that can result in data loss.

Broadly, data center security technology can be broken down into three main pillars: physical security, network security and general cybersecurity.

Physical data center security measures fortify the actual data center site. Some examples include:

• Lighting and cameras: Perimeter and interior lighting can illuminate sensitive areas such as backdoors. Lighting can help deter would-be intruders and improve visibility for closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, which can capture a record of any intrusions or trespasses. 
  
  
• Security guards: Data center security teams often include guards who regularly perform in-person patrols.
  
  
• Physical access controls: Data center access control systems often use traceable credentials, such as keycards, to both deter unauthorized access and verify and track who enters and exits the facility. Barriers such as secure walls, fences, gates and locks are also critical components of data center security. 
  
  
• Sensors and alarms: Intrusion sensors and alarms warn security teams of incidents in real time while also serving as a warning to intruders that their trespassing has not gone unnoticed.

By nature, data centers need to permit network access so users and organizations can access and retrieve their data. Network access, however, introduces a wide range of vulnerabilities that must be addressed through network security features, including:

• Firewalls: Network firewalls are deployed to monitor network traffic traveling in and out of the data center. Depending on how they are calibrated, firewalls can refuse access to users based on known suspicious indicators such as geographical location or other factors.
  
  
• Encryption: Encryption is used to help ensure that data sent in and out of the data center can be read only by verified and authenticated users.
  
  
• Virtual private networks: Virtual private networks (VPN) add extra layers of security for networked communication between data centers and outside locations. Remote-access VPNs facilitate secure data transfer between data centers and outside devices while keeping sessions encrypted end-to-end over untrusted networks. Additionally, common hacker targets such as admin panels, databases or application programming interfaces (APIs) can be shielded from direct access behind a VPN. For added security, VPNs can require further authentication, such as multifactor authentication (MFA).

In addition to network-specific protections, data center security involves broader cybersecurity measures, such as:

• Password policies: Rigorous security standards ensure passwords used to authenticate users are strong and hard to guess. Requiring regular password rotations can also help make it difficult for unauthorized users to abuse legitimate credentials to gain access to sensitive systems. 
  
  
• Digital access controls: Identity and access management (IAM) tools help organizations provision and protect digital identities and user access permissions in an IT system. Common digital access controls include MFA, which requires that users supply two or more credentials to verify their identities and gain system access, and the principle of least privilege, which ensures that users have only the lowest permissions necessary to do their jobs. 
  
  
• Biometric security systems: Biometric security measures, such as facial, retina or fingerprint identification software, use unique physical characteristics to verify user identities. These types of systems are difficult for hackers to break and provide a high level of security. 

Data center security teams might also deploy a range of cybersecurity software solutions, including:

• Antivirus software: Regularly updated antivirus software helps identify and respond to the latest cyberthreats.
  
  
• Endpoint detection and response (EDR) software: Endpoint detection and response (EDR) software uses real-time analytics and AI-driven automation to protect an organization’s end users, endpoint devices and IT assets.
  
  
• Network detection and response (NDR): Network detection and response (NDR) technologies use non-signature-based methods—such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and behavioral analytics—to detect suspicious or malicious activity on the network.
  
  
• Data detection and response (DDR): Data detection and response (DDR) tools monitor and protect data in any format and location across on premises, cloud and multicloud environments by tracking data movement and activity.
  
  
• Data loss prevention (DLP): Data loss prevention (DLP) solutions inspect data packets as they move across a network and detect the use of confidential information such as credit card numbers, healthcare data, customer records and intellectual property to apply the right access controls and usage policies to each type of data.
  
  
• User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA):  User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) software applies behavioral analytics, machine learning algorithms and automation to identify abnormal and potentially dangerous user and device behavior.