Google DC Security Show Inspired By Facebook Open

Google April 22 touted the security of its data centre operations, offering the computing world a rare glimpse of the physical security and data-protection schemes employed in its data centre operations.

The search engine company produced a video (see below) of its South Carolina facility, one of dozens of data centres Google has built around the world to host consumer and customer data generated by its search and Google Apps collaboration software.

The data created by these services is hosted on thousands of custom-built Google servers running a bare-bones version of Linux.

Tight Security Protects Google Secrets

Access to the data centres itself is tightly controlled; there are no public tours or site visits. Even employee access is restricted to necessary personnel. Google also uses security fencing, numerous digital security cameras to watch the data centres, and security guards are on point 24/7.

Special badges are the norm but some data centres also practice biometric security via retinal camera scans. Google has always locked up its data centres to keep rivals from gleaning information about its cloud-computing infrastructure, thus gaining a competitive advantage.

The media has juxtaposed the data centre video with Facebook’s Open Compute project, in which the company open sourced its data centre hardware and schematics earlier this month.

Facebook’s move was an open-source olive branch to the computing community at large but it was also a calculated play to urge the creation of less expensive, commodity servers.

Google’s video tour is an educational push designed to assure enterprises and federal agencies considering a Google Apps collaboration software contract of its stringent data security. Government contracts are especially popular since the US government declared its intent to move to cloud-computing systems more than a year ago.

Google and Microsoft jousted over cloud collaboration contracts for such agencies as the General Services Administration, and the Department of Interior. Google secured the GSA deal and is suing to block Microsoft from getting the $59 million (£36m) contract.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has done what it could to paint Google as a liar over its government-security education.

With this video, Google can show prospective buyers in business and government alike how seriously it treats the customer data it hosts.

Security Stretches To Software

In the past couple of years, Google  has also worked on the software side to shore up data security, adding two-step verification, default https encryption, attachment viewing, and mobile-device management in the browser, among other data-protection perks.

“For the three million businesses that have gone Google and the thousands more that join them every day, these features help ensure that their data is kept safe,” said Adam Swidler, senior manager for Google Enterprise.

The data centre video should also help reassure concerned businesses.