A major LSE-listed consulting company contracted Migration Solutions to build a 90m2 high-security data centre in early 2006. The consulting company specialises in providing information intelligence for leading commercial and public sector organisations, including banks and government departments. Its main areas of expertise include national security, risk and compliance management, and business intelligence - the security of its clients’ data is therefore paramount.
A site was identified in the South East of England and, in order to ensure minimal disruption to service, the brief called for the new data centre to be built around a current live computer room. Migration Solutions’ proposal for a data centre, to CEAP 3 standards, which addressed key security concerns was accepted. Aspects of the proposal included:
Physical Security – Along with fire detection and suppression systems, Migration Solutions also installed room partitions capable of withstanding a sustained attack of any kind for a minimum of 10 minutes.
Communications Security – the data centre was designed with a substantially fibre network - no copper connection ingresses or egresses the centre.
"Deep" Utility Redundancy – the data centre was installed with two sources for electricity and water to support continued service in case of an outage. Migration Solutions traced the electricity sources back to separate substations and the water back to two different mains.
Alex Rabbetts, MD of Migration Solutions said: "Our client had clear security goals for this project and wanted these addressed from the earliest stages of the data centre design. Physical security was as important as system-level security in this project – after all there’s little point in having robust firewalls if the partition walls are left flimsy!"
Migration Solutions was the prime contractor for the project with overall responsibility for Health & Safety on site. Migration Solutions allocated a five person team to the project, which was delivered to the client’s satisfaction on budget and within the agreed three month time frame.