Critical Infrastructure Security
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Geo Focus: The United Kingdom
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Geo-Specific
British Government Says Data Centers Are ‘Essential for Functioning of Society’
The U.K. government on Thursday designated data centers as part of its critical national infrastructure in a move intended to prevent the loss of sensitive user data during disruptive cyberattacks.
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British Technology Secretary Peter Kyle announced the government set up a dedicated critical national infrastructure team consisting of senior public officials to monitor threat to data centers.
The designation is the first addition to a list of “national assets” deemed “essential for functioning of society” that the British government has made in almost a decade. The United Kingdom is home to close to 400 or more than 500 data centers, according to estimates. Most are clustered in London and its immediate vicinity.
A shift to cloud computing combined with the advent of data-thirsty artificial intelligence tools have sparked a global demand for more data centers. The newly elected Labour government pledged in its election manifesto to remove “planning barriers” to new data centers in order to ensure the growth of a domestic AI sector.
The newly announced data center security team will monitor and anticipate potential cyberthreats. It will also work with the U.K. National Cyber Security Center for incident response.
NCSC CEO Felicity Oswald on Thursday said U.K. critical infrastructure is a “high-priority” target for nation state hackers. A 2023 NCSC analysis said Russian-speaking threats actors including state-aligned hackers and ransomware groups, as well as Chinese hackers backed by Beijing, pose the biggest threat to the U.K.’s critical infrastructure (see: UK NSCS Highlights Risks to Critical Infrastructure).
“Data centers will now be held to higher standards of security, resilience and risk management, which is essential for safeguarding the vast amounts of citizens’ data stored in the U.K.’s data centers, ensuring it is treated with the same priority as other key national resources,” said Jordan Schroeder, managing CISO at Glasgow-based Barrier Networks.
Jon Mort, CTO of London-based Adaptavist Group, called the measure a vital step that can help the government and private players to ensure the security of data centers from evolving threats tied to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence and cloud.