When clients move their business to the Advance2000 Data Centers, they want to know that their businesses are protected and their data is safe. This is the primary concern for businesses and rightly so. This article outlines Advance2000’s Data Center Security protocols without exposing any details that can be used by hackers to compromise our infrastructure. Advance2000 owns the data centers and the assets discussed below.
The only 100% secure computer is one that is turned off, battery taken out, and unplugged from power and network. That makes your computer somewhat less than useful, we assume you need to power on your computers in order to work. Advance2000’s goal is to make computing safe and secure.
Department of Homeland Security
A Government official was looking to move their project to our datacenter and he said he couldn’t do it because he could not put his data in the “cloud”—it’s not secure. We asked him if he could put it into a private data center and he said of course. Advance2000 owns private data centers and we only call it the “cloud” because clients want to buy a “cloud”. In this case, he didn’t want to buy a cloud, he wanted a private data center. This is a key difference between Advance2000 and other Managed Services Providers (MSPs) or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers such as Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services. Those services are public data center Cloud providers, Advance2000 is private. Most small and medium sized businesses do not have the same security requirements as the Government but Advance2000 provides the same high level of security to all our clients – small to large.
Security Audits
An Information Security Assessment or a Cybersecurity Risk Assessment is important, but it just a point-in-time assessment. Cyber Security best practices dictate you must have the tools and procedures to constantly keep up with threats. That means on-going monitoring, patching, and other defensive tactics are a must.
Advance2000’s Network Operations Center (NOC) is staffed 24/7/365 and monitors system availability and security threats. We employ several internal and external tools to act on threats. Our “hackers” have the same tools as the real hackers but use their powers for good rather than evil.
Certifications
Many ask us if we have FEDRAMP, SSAE16, or any other certifications. Short answer is yes, if your business needs those certifications, we can provide that level of security. The truth of the matter is that those certifications are very expensive and most businesses do not require them. We have multiple datacenters; some have these certifications and others do not. For the datacenters that do not have these certifications, we “self-certify” to those standards. We encourage our clients to send their IT security teams or Consultants to audit us. Several clients have done this, one even sent in a “Big 5” consultant. For most clients, this is more than sufficient to satisfy their security requirements. We use the same security standards across all our datacenters.
Physical Security
Advance2000 provides many levels of physical/hardware security:
- Controlled physical access to offices and datacenters: Biometrics, hardened windows and doors. Only certain engineers are authorized in datacenter
- Block wall construction, no exterior facing windows
- Identification Management (ID badges, escort/visitor management)
- Video Security Systems
- Redundant fiber/optical networks
- Redundant/separated servers and data stores
- Zero client terminals
- Power redundancy
- Carrier-Grade Enterprise networking
Software Security
Advance2000 provides many levels of software/logical security:
- Regular penetration testing, e.g. “white hat hacking”
- Virtual LANs
- Hypervisor and Virtualization security
- Operating System Security
- Application level security
- Anti-virus / Anti-ransomware / Anti-malware software
- Multi-factor Authentication
- Data Loss Protection (DLP)
- Credential Management / Rights / Permissions
- Firewall/Email Anti-spam filtering
- Phishing Tests and education
- Dedicated and virtual customer environments
Security is not something to be taken lightly and is very much an on-going battle. Small and medium sized businesses have exactly the same data protection needs as large companies but with much smaller budgets. Advance2000’s staff and Private Data Centers provide the economies of scale and best-in-class security for ALL businesses—whether large or small.
Our smallest client is a two-person firm and the largest is a Fortune 50 corporation. There is absolutely no way a small firm that size could provide this level of security for themselves. With Advance2000, they have the same secured infrastructure as the Fortune 50 firm in our cloud/data center.
The question Owners have to ask themselves: Is your business & data safer in your office or in the Advance2000 data center? Explore more about Advance2000’s Cybersecurity Risk Assessment and IT Risk Assessment & Strategy.