Meesons says that improved security is vital to protect your data centres With more of our personal information being stored on a daily basis, the need for improved physical security at data centres across the UK is ever more important.  Add this to global corporations,  who stipulate ‘fortress’  back up locations for data retrieval and the end result is that Data Centres are having to meet the increasing  demands  to deliver a level of security seldom dreamt of ten years ago.

With this need for improved security and a requirement to further reinforce employee and customer protection comes a stipulation for privacy throughout the data centre. The damage caused by unauthorised people entering secure locations has always been an issue, but now with the global threat of terrorism that risk has been magnified.

Jeremy Terry, Meesons managing director believes there are three Dimensions to the ultimate security scenario. “The first dimension is access control installed to ensure only people with the correct card or credential can enter a building/area. The second dimension is CCTV which is employed to monitor and record events.  The third dimension is anti-tailgating.  It is only when this is in place that we are able to ascertain exactly who has been in a certain area and when, because we know who ‘should’ be entering and we can review who precisely WAS in the area after an event has been reported”

Meesons recently completed a project for a pan European data hosting company with offices throughout London.  Their  task - to deliver an improved anti tailgating solution to seamlessly integrate and enhance the company’s existing access control systems, whilst  dramatically reducing  the queuing time faced by existing staff  and authorised personnel  to enter the building.  The same scalable solution is employed as an assurance of authorised access into individual data halls.
Meesons used the third dimension to meet the brief’s objective. The solution was to utilise tailored products dependent upon the environment with anti tailgating portals to provide physical anti tailgating prevention and their SMACS system retrofitting to provide an almost invisible tailgating eliminator.  SMACS provides for enhanced security through 3D recognition and BioVisual body mass control to ensure only one person can enter a building or secure area at any one time by simultaneously recording and recognising the entrant’s physical identity. This removes a major flaw used with other anti tailgating systems of floor mounted weight sensors or proximity cards which requires the eagle eye of security guards to ensure that the card matches the ‘legal’ owner.

An integral part of the brief was to improve efficiency while reducing costs, but still allow for 24/7 building access for personnel without the reliance and over dependence of security guards.  This was achieved through combining a security portal with the SMACS system which has been intensely trialled and tested and has proved its worth with a zero percentage chance of false acceptance.

Like other businesses, improved efficiency and productivity plays an important part in Data Hosting   profitability.  Productivity isn’t helped by authorised personnel having to queue to gain admittance. This can be overcome by increasing the number of entrances; however the Meesons solution requires little additional building work to improve people flow with a single passage taking a matter of seconds.

Data Hosting will continue to require the toughest physical security measures to ensure customer data is stored safely.   The solution is to combine the anti-tailgating benefits of a security portal with the very latest in SMACS 3D recognition and BioVisual Body Mass control to safeguard personal and commercial data for the foreseeable future, and to provide a real return on investment through reducing costs and improved productivity.