industry news
Environmental
control to play
key role in the data
centre of the future
Fresh forecasts from Occams Business
Research & Consulting (OBRC) predict
that the global data centre cooling
market will grow at a compound annual
growth rate (CAGR) of 14.95% between
2016 and 2023.
Greg McCulloch, CEO of Aegis Data,
gives examples of technologies that will
ultimately depend on a data centre’s
cooling capabilities, “AI, IoT, VR and
AR – what all these technologies have
in common is that they are predicted to
grow in prominence over the next few
years, and that they have complex and
demanding data requirements.” In order
to thrive in this age of exponentially
growing data volumes, organisations are
increasingly turning to high performance
computing (HPC) services.
In relation to cooling, for a data
centre to comfortably accommodate
HPC it must be able to accommodate
its superior processing power, which
often involves concentrating more
computing power in higher density
racks. This produces far more heat than
the standard data centre configuration,
meaning that efficiently cooling this
space becomes far more important for
supporting this technology.
Huge data centre providers are
going to great lengths to minimise their
cooling costs. For example, Facebook
located a data centre in near-arctic Luleå,
northern Sweden. Greg commented, “You
don’t need to have the vast resources of
Facebook to access the kind of cooling
efficiencies needed to support the ever-
expanding data requirements of new
technologies. There are various other
approaches available, including liquid or
conductive cooling.”
For further information visit:
www.aegisdata.net
‘Unintentional insiders’ could cause
most damage to an organisation
According to a new survey released by SANS Institute,
organisations are so single-minded about defending against
external attacks, that they are ignoring a threat with vastly
greater potential for damage.
76% of security and IT professionals polled globally said
the greatest potential for damage comes from a possible data
breach involving employees or contractors trusted with insider
access to sensitive data. 40% worry about insiders acting out
of malice; 36% say the risk from insiders who are careless
with security, or fooled by scams from outside, would do the
greatest damage to reputations and bottom lines in the event
of an attack. Only 23% predicted the most damage could be
done by attackers from the outside.
An unintentional insider is defined as a user who is tricked
into or manipulated into causing harm, or whose credentials
have been stolen in phishing or other user-focused exploits,
8 | October 2017
designed to let attackers pose as legitimate users to access
privileged information. A malicious insider, on the other hand,
is someone who knowingly causes harm and damage to an
organisation by stealing, damaging or disclosing information.
As organisations deploy the latest security tools and
techniques to protect from ever creative and sophisticated
outside attackers, cyber criminals are looking for easier
targets. Users who already have access to an organisation’s
most sensitive data, for example, and aren’t as hard to fool as
security systems.
While security professionals clearly understand the risks that
insider threats pose, very few seem to have any idea how much
damage could be involved. 45% of respondents said the cost of a
potential loss was ‘unknown’, while 33% said they had no specific
estimate of cost.
For further information visit: www.sans.org