Major financial institution adopts RackANGEL rack security solution

With tightening regulatory and compliance requirements affecting information security, the need for better physical security to protect IT assets stored in data centre 19” racks has never been more important.

These were just part of the challenges being faced by a major financial institution looking to improve the security of their server racks housed within their data centre. Whilst access to the facility and to the server room were secured by proximity access cards and CCTV, the racks which were all supplied from the same rack manufacturer were vulnerable to attack. There were several reasons for this, firstly as the racks were all from the same manufacturer, it meant they all used the same key for the standard swing-handle locks fitted to them. This meant anyone with a key for one rack could potentially gain access to any of the others. Secondly, with up to 10 engineers working in the room at any one time it was impossible to know which engineer was accessing which rack. They needed to find a better way to control access to the racks so to improve the security and better protect the data stored within the racks. As part of the solution they also wanted to upgrade from proximity cards to a biometric solution.

EDP Europe were able to offer the perfect solution with RackANGEL. RackANGEL combines three technologies to provide secure protection, increased visibility and controlled access to 19” racks.

The first part of the RackANGEL solution is a cost effective, retro-fitting intelligent locking and access control system that provides real-time reporting on the status of individual cabinet doors, issuing alerts when unauthorised events occur. The system can be configured so that individuals can only access specific doors, with the door handles providing a visual indication as to which racks can be accessed. The system also allows the doors to be remotely unlocked, enabling secure and controlled access for visiting engineers.

The second part of the solution addressed their desire for a biometric solution, but with a major benefit of utilising existing infrastructure, saving the expense of changing equipment. EDP Europe offers a biometric access card that is compatible with most popular entry systems but provides a dual-level of authentication without the need to store or manage the biometric data.

The final part of the RackANGEL solution was the addition of in-rack CCTV surveillance cameras that were integrate into the rack access control system. These provided both real-time recordings and historical footage of both authorised and unauthorised events allowing a visual record to be kept of all accesses to the individual racks.

With the RackANGEL solution implemented this customer is now able to accurately track and report on access to its server racks. They now know who has accessed them, when, for how long and why. With accesses recorded to provide indisputable evidence of who performed the activity should a situation arise.