EXPERT OPINION
Securing the data centre –
how to safeguard your digital investments
The demand for cloud-
hosted services has
shown no signs of
waning and as the
International Data Corp
(IDC) predicts data
creation will hit 163
zettabytes by 2025, the
need for modernised
data centres is only set
to rise. Bharat Mistry,
Principal Security
Strategist, Trend Micro,
discusses how and
why enterprises should
be ensuring their data
centres are secure.
40
Issue 05
he data centre is undergoing
a profound period of change.
Digital Transformation projects
are demanding a shift away
from on-premises legacy equipment to
agile hybrid cloud environments. But
in so doing, organisations are exposing
themselves to unprecedented levels of
cyber-risk. Tackling this challenge means
understanding what levels of risk your
organisation is prepared to live with and
then applying controls appropriately to
manage the increasingly diverse range of
threats targeting modern data centres.
T
market set to be worth US$462 billion by
2024 as firms look to AI, IoT, Big Data and
more to drive innovation-fuelled growth.
The data centre sits at the heart of these
initiatives. But unless you’re a born-in-the-
cloud company, the chances are you’ll be
running a mix of physical, virtual and cloud
operations on-premises and in third-party
data centres. You might even be running
new architectures designed to further
improve flexibility and reduce overheads:
one study from 2018 found 72% of firms
are using or evaluating containers and 46%
doing the same for serverless computing.
The digital stampede
Over 70% of UK organisations have a
Digital Transformation strategy in place
or are implementing one, according to the
Cloud Industry Forum. The lure of greater
IT efficiencies, streamlined processes,
business agility and cost savings has
convinced boards to invest heavily. It’s a
There are security challenges associated
with all of these decisions. Running
heterogeneous environments can create
dangerous siloes and blind spots, while
IT leaders must be aware that physical
cybersecurity tools cannot simply be
migrated to cloud environments. The
risks are compounded by today’s complex
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