How Dallas' Infomart Upgraded Its 30-Year-Old Facility With State-Of-The-Art Security

Updating and securing a 30-year-old building is always a challenge. Now add in expensive equipment, sensitive information and dozens of users, and you can imagine what John Sheputis and his team at Infomart Data Centers had to work through to secure Dallas' iconic data center Infomart. Here's how they got it done.

The 30-year-old building spans 1.6M SF over seven floors, sees thousands of deliveries and human entry and exit daily and offers more than 100MW of power for its 25-plus carriers. As John (pictured) puts it, they couldn't just lock up the building, throw away the key and call it secure. 

Compliance and industry trends drove the property (which John says was secure for, say, a Class-A office building, but not the Southwest's premier data center) to meet higher security standards. 

These improved measures were about getting back to a market level of security for a changing market, John tells us.

Infomart's first step was rallying several tenants into a tenant security council earlier this year. Together, the TSC and Infomart reformatted entry and exit with badges and a better camera network. 

For the last 30 years, staff (or anyone, really) could enter the building without being asked any questions. Infomart spent about $6M increasing security staff so no one can enter the building without a badge or express authorization from a tenant. 

It has been the biggest change in the building's operations in the building's history, John says.

Improvements to common areas like the lobby made up the first of three phases in this initiative. Securing logistics and delivery management will be Phase 2. Adding a new dock master station for the loading docks will also be part of this phase.

The final phase will be fencing the building's perimeter. Infomart will have to work through shared access with adjacent property's parking garage.

Good security should not be inconvenient for honest people, John tells us.

See these security measures in action and hear more from John at our Annual Data Center Investment Expo 2016 on Nov. 10. Sign up here.