DATA CENTRE SECURITY 2025 IBERIAN PENINSULA BLACKOUT: WHAT HAPPENED
Both Spain and Portugal experienced a mass blackout on 28th April 2025, which caused widespread disruption.
The significance of this outage saw a state of emergency put in place in Spain amid confusion as cities like Valencia and Barcelona were left completely without power. With no evidence of a cyberattack, it pointed directly to the consequences of poor grid resilience.
“ The modern data centre, long considered the fortress of digital infrastructure, now faces a new class of threat: systemic power loss,” says Kevin Hexley, Chief Technical Architect at Systal Technology Solutions.“ These blackouts are not isolated failures; they are existential tests of how resilient, intelligent and cybersecure our critical systems really are.
“ Disaster recovery( DR) is no longer just a checkbox exercise or a dusty playbook for rare scenarios. For data centre operators, it is now a core business enabler. Power-related failures are particularly dangerous: they don’ t just take systems offline; they often blind the business.
“ DR must now be built into the very DNA of operational design.”
But are data centre operators investing enough? In many cases, Kevin explains that traditional disaster recoveries fail to account for grid-induced failures.
“ What’ s often missed in DR planning is the cybersecurity dimension,” he shares.“ Data centres must plan for not just recovery, but operational continuity during rolling or prolonged outages.”
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