Seemingly every day, we're getting reports from around the world about another data center security lapse or a hacking attack on a major industry. Because of that, a recent International Business Times story showed security expenditures have gone from a major company concern to a critical one.

Security spending projected to rise
In referencing a Gartner report, the Times found that companies around the world are forecasting expenditures on security upgrades and software platforms will be more than $71 billion through 2014. That's up 7.9 percent over last year's spending and well below the expected 8.2 percent hikes to usher in 2015. Adapting to the ever-increasing threat of cybercrime and data center incursions and Gartner's Lawrence Pingree said the development of mobile and social platforms will likely drive growth into 2016 and beyond.

"This Nexus of Forces is impacting security in terms of new vulnerabilities," Pingree said in a statement. "It is also creating new opportunities to improve effectiveness, particularly as a result of better understanding security threats by using contextual information and other security intelligence."

Gartner also noted in their report that new regulations in Western Europe and in the Asian Rim nations are also a large factor in company spending and pressure to be in compliance is rising.

Companies are looking at or deploying biometrics
Increasingly business executives are looking toward biometric technology as an avenue for tighter security at a reasonable cost. Fingerprint scanning, for example, is an almost foolproof way for a company to maintain access control over their server cabinets and data centers. By using singular identifiers of each employee – their fingerprints – access to vital and secured areas can only be gained by those employees who's data matches that in the system. How it works is an employee places their finger on a fingerprint reader which scans it and creates a template for that employee. If that worker wants to access the data center they use one of many fingerprint scanners installed throughout the exterior and interior of the facility. If their print matches what stored in the data center they are authorized to enter. In this operation, security has a very tight biometric access control mechanism to assist in safeguarding the physical and proprietary assets of the facility.

More than 300 United States data breaches
A Bloomberg article that listed the Top 10 U.S. data breaches of all time also noted that there have been at least 300 breaches that have been reported in the last 9 years with the oft-discussed Target breach only coming in at number five. Although the breaches have been caused by varying miscreants and with different approaches, locking down the data center with biometric security is a proven way to thwart insider malfeasance which the Ponemon Institute said was a leading cause of data loss and security breaches.

In an ever-changing technological world protecting assets and data has become the focal point of security teams and industry managers. Embracing biometric security can help keep a company's facility, data centers and server safer than traditional key and passcard methods and help to cut costs. With the costs associated with a breach or a hack rising exponentially each year most businesses are allocating more finances and resources to protect themselves against evolving threats.

Being ahead of the development curve as the years go forward is a sure way to keep the company safe, secure and operating at full strength. If management is not on top of all the latest threats and software "fixes" then suffering a breach is a likely event and the losses incurred by such a devastating event could be enough to send an otherwise successful enterprise operation into oblivion.

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