Security of Equipment in poorly-secured locations.

Tue May 4 20:34:02 UTC 2004

Although a webcam is cheaper, Netbotz has a slick rackmount camera that does
envionmentals as well.  On motion detection it snaps 5 frames off to a
central server which can be tied into a NMS.

In this particular case, the colo being open racks (apparently), physical
security was lacking a lot.  But, just as with spam, the measure -
counter-measure struggle goes on.  "Locks only keep honest people out."

Jeff

'scuse the disclaimer below.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
Bruce Campbell
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2004 2:04 PM
To: North American Noise and Off-topic Gripes
Subject: Security of Equipment in poorly-secured locations.

On Tue, 4 May 2004, Jay Hennigan wrote:

> Subject: Re: "Network Card Theft Causes Internet Outage"
> Of course, it's just as likely that a Verizon employee lifted them as 
> a colocation customer, and either is far more likely than terrorists.

So, say that your equipment, sitting in a shared facility, suffered
'tampering' of some description.  What would you do to prevent that
happening in the first place, or failing that, to have a positive
description to hand to the local authorities?

To start off, what we've done with our gear thats located in a shared
facility is to change the locks on our racks so the facility rack key (which
everyone has a copy of) doesn't work.  The administrators of the facility
have a copy of our rack key in order to do any remote hands work that we
need though.

What has been suggested (but not implemented) for our gear is to have a
network camera on the inside of each rack activated by the racks being
opened (for some vague definition of 'opened').  Easily defeated by lifting
the floor tiles and disconnecting the uplink cable of course, but reasonable
peace of mind against the casual equipment lifter.

--
  Bruce Campbell.
  Sysadmin/Etc.

**************************************************************
This message, including any attachments, contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law.  If you are not the intended recipient, please contact sender immediately by reply e-mail and destroy all copies.  You are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited.
TIAA-CREF
**************************************************************