The data center is a vital part of any business or governmental operation, but a recent survey of IT professionals in the government realm stated they had little or no confidence in their agency's capability to meet their crucial failover and uptime service level agreements. In fact, more than 80 percent of those federal IT employees told Meritalk, the company that conducted the survey, that data center reliability is their chief concern, but there's little confidence they could bounce back quickly from an incursion.

Downtime is troubling
Forty-two percent of the professionals surveyed said they felt that downtime left them unable to support their agency's operations. Meritalk surveyed 300 IT field workers and desk jockeys and the field workers said that real-time access to data is critical for them. If everything's working correctly, the workers told Meritalk, they can save about 816 man hours of work annually. However, the survey also found that 70 percent of all United States governmental agencies reported 30 minutes or more of downtime and 90 percent of all workers indicated their jobs were heavily impacted by the downtime.

Pros grade their agencies
In an Executive Gov story that quoted the same Meritalk report, they also found that 36 percent of all the respondents said the downtime management policies at their particular agency was no better than a C-grade. Only 29 percent believe their agency IT departments fully understand how downtime truly affects the office's ability to deliver mission critical information and data. Not all the evaluations were bad, though, as the reports showed that 29 percent of those queried said they'd give an A-grade for accurate and concise data delivery to office personnel daily.

Preventing downtime
One way that downtime and incursions can be prevented effectively and cost-efficiently is by deploying biometric access control. This entails utilizing state-of-the-art fingerprint scanning technology, a process unique to each employee, as identifiers. Fingerprints are non-duplicable and no human being has another's prints. By situating fingerprint scanners throughout the physical company facility, company security personnel can, along with all other security measures implemented – cameras, barriers, wire and staff – effectively lock down the date center to all but authorized staff members.

The only way anyone can gain access to the data center or server cabinets is by having their prints scanned into the system and then using a fingerprint reader to match their print to the one in the access control system. 

A recent Tech Republic article detailed how fingerprint scanning combined with mantraps in the data center access way is a virtually fool proof protective measure. Even if one were able to breach the access ways by thwarting a fingerprint reader the mantrap, also activated by biometric technology, can be a solid adjunct to the security provided by the scanners.

While having detractors like every other new discipline known to man, fingerprint and biometric technology has provided excellent security for those who have employed it. As each day brings another threat and more breaches to security systems and data centers around the world, biometric software developers are continuing their quest to firm up the data centers and provide their current clients the best protection available to-date. As more companies explore the ramifications of biometric technology companies like Digitus Biometrics in America are working to give their clients the best protection possible and to attract new customers by letting the product speak for itself.

Efficiency, cost savings and near flawless protection is what biometric security can bring to any company looking to prevent expensive data losses either from internal malfeasance or external attacks.

Click here to discover how you can create indisputable audit trails with proper physical access control.