If you want to keep your I.T. infrastructure up and hopping you better make sure that you don't let
your electronics get too hot or too wet.
And that's why I want to talk about heating ventilation and air conditioning better known as H-back.
No I'm not going to turn you into an H vac expert but I as the security person for an I.T. infrastructure
are very interested in making sure that all my computers are running in a happy happy good temperature.
Good humidity environment.
Now the number one rule when it comes to electronics is that pretty much the cooler you run a piece
of electronics the happier it is.
And HVAD is the tool by which we make that happen now.
HVAD AC has two very different kind of worlds the first HBC world is the office environment the same
office environment that you and I are walking around and taking care of.
In that case we're trying to set up an ATV a system that's designed to be good for human beings which
is going to be some type of room temperature I'm going to get into what that number is.
And a good relatively humidity so that people can be comfortable.
The second type of HVAD are what I'm going to just call server rooms and this type of situation we're
talking about super powerful super sophisticated super expensive AC systems whose only job is to keep
those racks and racks and racks of servers nice and cool and running in a 24/7 environment.
Now luckily for us we don't have to go into tons and tons of detail on HBC what we do have to be aware
of are some fairly scattered terms that you'll see on the exam that I want you to be comfortable with
and probably the first one is going to be an infrared camera infrared cameras aren't important design
element for any H-back system with infrared cameras.
Also known as thermal images whatever it might be.
These guys are sensors that look in the infrared range for heat sources.
Using tools like this we can determine leaks.
We can determine big heat emitters and then we can use shielding or insulation or whatever we need to
do to be able to make our systems better.
Next is zone based AC zone based HVAD.
Well Peeno let me just show you a picture.
So here's a little diagram of three offices.
Now if you look carefully you'll see that each one of these offices has its own thermostat.
However we only have a single HVAD system.
Now if you look very carefully you'll see we have little louvers on everything little doors.
So really what's happening here even though we have a single system people can control the relative
heat or cool for their one little zone simply by adjusting their thermostat which will then open and
close louvers which will control the amount of air going into each one of these systems.
The last thing I want to cover and probably the big one for the exam are hot and cold aisles.
If you think about a regular office in a regular office we usually have a c coming up from the floor
and then we have some type of return air that's up in the plane homes in the ceiling.
Now for rigor office environment that's great.
But let's take a look at this diagram and I can show you some of the challenges we run into when we
start going into the server rooms.
Now if you take a look at this diagram we basically have an edge on look at all of these rows and rows
and rows of server systems and they generate a lot of heat.
So what we typically do is we have cold air coming up from the plenum on the floor and it usually comes
up between two rows.
We call this the cooled aisle now from the cold aisle.
It will then go ahead and take that heat and push it out to the opposite aisles on either side of the
cold aisle and then pull that up through the roof itself in what we call warm Isles.
In fact in most systems today what we have is what we call a contained system.
And in this case what really takes place is the cold air comes up through the plenum but it's actually
pulled out through the real rocks themselves.
And in that case the whole idea of cold aisle and warm out kind of disappears because the air is all
contained within the electronics itself.
One of the cool things about today's H-back systems is that they're pretty much in and of themselves
their own little networks a standard HD system is going to have some type of controller system that's
running an operating system.
Even the individual little thermostats are often PCs if not PLCC that have their own operating systems
and controls and interface and everything.
The bottom line is is that today's VAX systems need their own security.
So if you're going to be dealing with an H vac system here's a couple of things I want you to think
about.
Number one if at all possible do an air gap keep your H vac system completely separated from the rest
of your network and I when I say separated I mean an air gap no connectivity whatsoever.
If you can't do that at the very least consider putting in a plan to isolate your H vac system from
the rest of your network.
This is actually fairly common because in a lot of H-back systems you'll see stations all over the place
where technicians can go up to do controls to the H-back system not not talking to thermostat I'm talking
about big control systems.
Now if that is the case this is one place I'm not a big fan of Mac filtering but here's one place where
Mac filtering can actually work by setting up your Mac filtering so that only those workstations that
are known to be supposed to be operating the H-back system have access.
Mac filtering can be a real plus in that type of scenario.
The last one is well a bit of a problem.
The reality is is that none of us take care of our own systems.
Invariably we have third parties will certainly install them but on top of that to maintain them and
to keep them up and running and keep everything happy.
And unless you actually want to pay for a third party technician to be in your location 24/7 we usually
have remote monitoring which is a very common thing to do.
And unfortunately there have been some fairly public security breaches as a result of bad guys using
third party remote monitoring functions to get into a primary network.
So if you're going to be having that type of stuff work out with your service level agreements to make
sure that your vendors your suppliers your maintainers whoever it might be at the very least are using
VPN access to get into your fax system.
And if you can really do it right.
Throw in a 2.1 x.
All right so we've covered a couple of very basic points here.
Keep in mind the exam is not going to hit you very hard on H-back it expects you as a security person
to have an understanding that there can be issues that come up.
However when it comes to actually keeping these things up and running.
Leave it to the pros.