Why RSA surveillance is vital to your data center security

Across the world’s most forward-thinking data centers, security professionals are taking a closer look at perimeter security. They’re thinking beyond the fence line and expanding detection methods inside and outside their properties to quickly identify and defuse potential threats before they reach highly sensitive or restricted zones.  

To stay alert and effective at securing colocation facilities, security teams are turning their attention to innovative solutions such as Security Center Restricted Security Area (RSA) Surveillance. This built-in module not only combines multiple lines of defense such as 360-degree perimeter intrusion, target tracking, and geofencing, it gives operators a complete view of intrusion detection and security operations under one visualization pane.

Keep reading to learn how the RSA Surveillance system can help you better secure your data center facilities and ensure your business keeps running smoothly.

 

 

Unify your technologies in one visualization pane

Monitoring various stand-alone perimeter intrusion detection systems isn’t as effective as it should be. While these radar and laser-based systems can be helpful, having to manage events from different types of sensors can often amplify false alarms, overwhelm operators, and slow response to real threats.

Using the RSA Surveillance system allows you to bring all your radar sensors, fence sensors, lasers scans, LiDAR sensors, and video analytics into one intuitive monitoring solution. The RSA Surveillance module also links up with video surveillance, access control, and other security technologies within the Security Center platform.

From there, you’ll be able to create one or many zone overlays which correlate information from various perimeter and security technologies in the defined areas. That means when a threat is detected, your operators can then do things like quickly check RSA Surveillance events alongside video from nearby security cameras. They can also arm and disarm restricted zones within your data center based on access control roles or schedules.

For instance, if a service technician or employee has the authorization to work on server racks #6 and #7, then they’ll be able to go about the maintenance without a problem. If by chance, they approach or even touch rack #8, your system can be programmed to alert your operators who can then monitor the situation more closely.

Within Security Center, your team can also take advantage of Mission Control, our collaborative decision management system, to customize the conditions that warrant certain threat levels and standard operating procedures (SOPs), so every situation is managed according to your security policies.

Manage areas, targets, and threats to better protect your facilities

Securing your data center requires a layered security approach. Being alerted to intrusion at your fence line is important, but you also need to actively monitor and secure various points within your environment to keep threats at bay.

Using the RSA Surveillance system, you can set up different ways to protect sensitive zones and automate threat detection. This includes creating buffer zones around your restricted areas to pre-qualify potential threats before they become bigger problems.

So, if there’s a group of people gathering in areas around your data center, or a drone is flying in near-distant fields, the RSA Surveillance system can trigger the security operator to qualify the threat and either dismiss it as a non-issue or respond quickly.

If your team identifies an actual threat, they can then tag the moving target to raise threat levels and actively monitor the situation on an intuitive map. The RSA’s geolocation capabilities will begin automatically tracking the target’s speed and location, displaying live video feeds to your operators as the intruder moves around or within your site.

Reduce nuisance alarms and conduct vulnerability assessments

A big problem with many intrusion detection systems is the volume of false alarms. When your operators receive hundreds of alerts and most of them are animals running around your perimeter, they can easily lose sight of real threats.

Within Security Center, the RSA Surveillance system allows you to customize settings and stipulate which targets warrant an operator response, and which can be ignored. A unique feature within the RSA Surveillance system called Fusion further minimizes any nuisance alarms for your operators.

Using built-in algorithms, Fusion relies on information from various sensors to determine when a target is only a single threat. That means instead of getting many alarms from your different systems for the same event, your operators will only receive one. This alone has proven to reduce noise by up to 80%.

Over time, having all this information becomes valuable to pinpoint true security vulnerabilities in and around your data center. Through heatmaps in the RSA Surveillance system, your team can better identify and understand hotspots for intrusions or weaknesses across your environment. You can also filter the heatmap data based on a specific type of event or intrusion, a specific area, or even your different pre-configured zones to dive into the details and pinpoint opportunities for stronger data center security.