How IT security could go green?

Ian Kilpatrick, noted that, not long ago, the whole tech industry had a rather rotten reputation when it came to all things green, but that recent trends in environmental awareness had made companies pull up their socks when it came to things like power consumption, using toxic substances, over-packaging, air conditioning and product life cycle.

According to Kilpatrick, companies weren’t just making the green changes out of the goodness of their hearts, but because customers now demanded that they do so.

Everything from product design, to the manufacturing process and eventual disposal of tech equipment now has to comply with a whole host of regulations which aim to reduce pollution and cut energy consumption. And those who don’t comply face Greenpeace wrath. Scary stuff.

Kilpatrick then goes on to note that Unified Threat Management (UTM) systems could be just the thing to push IT security into saintly green-ness as the multi featured box could merge a plethora of appliances into just one product “so a single UTM appliance saves space in the office and significantly reduces power consumption.” One box to secure them all.

The fact that it is also relatively easy to upgrade UTMs and add more functions to them, Kilpatrick explains, also means that they can “grow and change with a company's needs, rather than having to be wastefully ditched when it fails to cope with a burgeoning business.”

Companies should also make a considerable effort to comply with the European Community directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and the RoHS Directive which restricts the use of substances like lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and flame retardants PBB and PBDE in electrical and electronic products, says Kilpatrick.