CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTS
and vehicles have access to the surrounding area as well as the building itself ,” since the “ reputational damage , regulatory fines and customer churn ” that can follow a breach make them extremely costly affairs .
Some data centre operators make the effort to take physical security to the next level ( and then the next one after that as well ), like Iron Mountain , which operates an ultra secure data centre buried more than 200 feet under the hills of rural Pennsylvania at the bottom of a disused limestone mine , or Green Mountain , which famously operates a data centre inside a decommissioned NATO ammunition storage facility designed to ride out a nuclear apocalypse in relative comfort . Watkins admits that “ These types of locations are certainly a deterrent for potential attackers ,” but cautions that “ we must remember that we are in the business of providing a service for our clients . Logistically , it is far more difficult to get to and from these types of locations , making it non-viable for our customers who often work from our facilities and sometimes need to make changes to their equipment .”
Site selection , it would seem , is just one more plate for physical security teams to spin . “ We choose the locations of our data centres for many reasons , such as transport infrastructure , power provision and real estate cost and availability , and physical security is always a key consideration ,” says Watkins , reflecting on VIRTUS ’ own portfolio . “ Furthermore , many large customers operate on a zonal topology which requires a number of facilities to be within certain distance restrictions which can limit the opportunity for this type of deployment .” So , unless you ’ re looking to lock away your state secrets for a very long time , bringing your data centre above the surface of the earth still seems to be worth the risk .
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