Information facilities are liable for operating most of the companies that underpin the techniques we work together with day by day. Transportation, logistics, power, finance, nationwide safety, well being techniques, and different lifeline companies all depend on up-to-the-second information saved in and accessed by information facilities. On a regular basis actions reminiscent of debit and bank card funds, sending emails, reserving tickets, receiving textual content messages, utilizing social media, search engines like google and yahoo, and AI chatbots, streaming TV, making video calls, and storing digital pictures all depend on information facilities.
These buildings now join such an unimaginable vary of actions and utilities throughout authorities, enterprise, and society that any downtime can have main penalties. The UK authorities has formally categorized information facilities as forming a part of the nation’s important nationwide infrastructure—a transfer that additionally conveniently allows the federal government to justify constructing many extra of those energy-guzzling services.
As I sit pondering the concrete actuality of the cloud in Cyberfort’s ready space, the corporate’s chief digital officer, Rob Arnold, emerges from a hall. It was Arnold who organized my go to, and we head for his workplace—by a safety door with a biometric fingerprint lock—the place he talks me by the logic of the bunkered information middle.
“The issue with most above-ground information facilities is they’re usually constructed shortly, and never constructed to face up to bodily threats like sturdy winds, automotive bombs, or server theft from breaking and coming into.” Arnold says that “most individuals have a tendency to consider the cyber facet of information safety—hackers, viruses, and cyberattacks—which dangerously overlooks the bodily facet.”
Amid growing geopolitical rigidity, web infrastructure is now a high-value goal as “hybrid” or “cyber-physical” sabotage (when cyberattacks are mixed with bodily assaults) turns into more and more frequent.
The significance of bodily web safety has been highlighted by the conflict in Ukraine, the place drone strikes and different assaults on digital infrastructure have led to web shutdowns. Whereas exact particulars in regards to the variety of information facilities destroyed within the battle stay scant, it has been noticed that Russian assaults on native information facilities in Ukraine have led many organizations emigrate their information to cloud services positioned outdoors of the battle zone.
Bunkers enchantment to what Arnold calls “security-conscious” purchasers. He says: “It’s tough to discover a construction safer than a bunker”—earlier than including drily: “The consumer may not survive the apocalypse, however their information will.”
Cyberfort focuses on serving regulated industries. Its buyer base consists of corporations working in protection, well being care, finance, and significant infrastructure. “Our core providing focuses on offering safe, sovereign, and compliant cloud and data-center companies,” Arnold explains in a well-rehearsed gross sales routine. “We do extra for our prospects than simply host techniques—we shield their reputations.”
Arnold’s pitch is disrupted by a knock on the door. The top of safety (who I’m calling Richard Thomas right here) enters—a 6-foot-tall ex-Royal Marine sporting black cargo trousers, black fight boots, and a black Cyberfort-branded polo shirt. Thomas goes to indicate me across the facility in the present day.