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Data centers form the critical foundation of digital operations across industries, hosting sensitive information, enabling cloud services, and powering essential business functions.
While data center operators have invested in strong perimeter and network defenses, wireless communication remains a largely unmonitored and highly exploitable attack surface. As wireless protocols and IoT devices proliferate across operational and IT environments, organizations require a new layer of defense: Wireless Airspace Defense. Bastille Networks provides the visibility, detection, and response capabilities to protect data centers from wireless threats, without disrupting operations or introducing network risk.
Evolving Wireless Threats to Data Centers
The risk profile of data centers has changed significantly with the rise of unmanaged wireless communications. Even in controlled environments with stringent policies, the following threats frequently emerge:
- Unauthorized Devices: Employees or contractors may inadvertently introduce mobile hotspots, Wi-Fi access points, USB modems, or wearable devices that bypass firewall protections and provide backdoors into secure systems.
- Wireless Bridging: Devices connected simultaneously to secure corporate networks and unsecured wireless networks (e.g., LTE, 5G, or guest Wi-Fi) create unintended data exfiltration paths. These “soft breaches” often go unnoticed by traditional network monitoring tools.
- IoT and Embedded Systems: Printers, security cameras, HVAC systems, environmental sensors, and smart lighting often communicate over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Zigbee, or proprietary radio frequency (RF) protocols. Misconfigurations or vulnerabilities in these systems open up additional attack vectors.
- SDR and Rogue Transmission Tools: Inexpensive software-defined radios (SDRs) allow threat actors to scan, spoof, or jam RF signals across various frequencies. These tools can emulate authorized devices or exploit unmonitored spectrum ranges.
The Case for Wireless Airspace Defense
The wireless airspace is a security blind spot in many data centers. Traditional firewalls, NAC systems, and endpoint agents effectively secure digital pathways but offer no visibility into the physical-layer RF activity that permeates data center environments.
Bastille enables data center operators to:
- Continuously Monitor the Entire Spectrum: Gain visibility across 100 MHz to 7.125 GHz, including Wi-Fi, LTE, 5G, BLE, Zigbee, and proprietary wireless protocols.
- Detect Rogue and Unknown Devices: Identify unauthorized transmissions from wireless devices that violate policy or introduce risk.
- Locate Devices Precisely: Determine the physical location of transmitting devices to enable rapid physical investigation and remediation.
- Correlate Wireless Activity with Network Events: Link RF emissions to potential bridging, lateral movement, or anomalous behavior.
- Support Compliance and Risk Governance: Document and enforce wireless policy as part of broader compliance mandates (such as NIST, ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and others).
Bastille Solution Brief | Securing Data Centers Against Wireless Threats