When Ukraine struck Russian data centers earlier this week, it was a stark reminder that the massive buildings are becoming a target in warfare. In March, the Iranian military struck Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates, which remained out of service several months later.
While warfare attacks on data centers may seem like a distant threat for Americans, a cybersecurity expert tells Mashable that they remain a valuable target for physical and digital breaches, even in the U.S.
“Everything you do online goes to a data center,” says Charles Brooks, an adjunct lecturer in cybersecurity at Georgetown University.
The average person’s Netflix viewing, Google Doc usage, and personal online banking, for example, typically rely on the servers housed in data centers.
Additionally, cloud computing services used by the government, healthcare systems, financial institutions, and businesses need data centers. They’re also vital for Earth-to-space communications, Brooks says.
That’s why stealing sensitive information from data center servers or disrupting their operations altogether has become alluring for state-backed criminal hackers and operatives.
Brooks says the 20-year-old adage of “data is the new oil” feels particularly true today. Just as oil supply and revenue have long been targets of war and government pressure campaigns, data has become immensely valuable and part of critical infrastructure.
“If something does happen it could be catastrophic,” Brooks says of a potential data center breach in the U.S.
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3 threats to U.S. data centers
While a foreign drone-powered attack on an American data center is highly unlikely, Brooks says one could become the target of a physical breach with explosives. Though the damage might be limited, such an attack would be a symbolic victory for terrorists, or violent groups opposed to AI and its infrastructure.
Physical security vulnerabilities
Brooks says data centers must be fortified with more than surveillance cameras, alarms, and barbed-wire fences. He recommends electrified perimeters, security guards, and defensive spaces around the control center and water-cooling systems.
The inside job
The most likely source of a breach is the insider who can access servers, data, and infrastructure because they have permission to be in the building, Brooks says. Whether this person is disgruntled, on an adversary’s payroll, or makes a costly mistake, they can still provide valuable information to bad actors, share security vulnerabilities, or interfere with a data center’s critical operations.
Brooks suggests using AI surveillance to detect unusual behavior and guard against malicious insiders. He believes the trade-off of potential false positives, in which a worker is falsely flagged as acting suspiciously, would be worth it given the types of vital information stored at data centers.
Brooks also supports rigorous background checks similar to the kind staff in hospitals and power plants undergo.
“Who you hire has a responsibility that that may go beyond a normal security job,” Brooks says.
AI-powered hacking
AI tools allow bad actors to rapidly scale their hacking efforts, including those against data centers.
For example, Anthropic recently released a security report detailing how individuals, including those backed by foreign governments, have used AI to automate cyber spying operations and conduct espionage.
Brooks says AI makes it easier for criminal hacker groups to efficiently “pan” the internet for clues about how to digitally infiltrate an AI data center. That might mean phishing an employee to access and use their system credentials.
“They’re scaling these attacks [with] much greater capacity, and they’re using AI software to find vulnerabilities that they didn’t know were there before,” Brooks says.
Why Americans should care about U.S. data center security
Brooks argues that data center security is a national security issue, given that the facilities have become critical infrastructure.
Even if a digital breach in an American data center feels invisible, it would likely have a ripple effect on ordinary people’s lives. People might be unable to work or conduct business or become the victims of a ransomware attack that includes their personal and sensitive data.
Brooks said that data center security should be guided by partnerships between the government and private companies that own them.
Fortifying U.S. facilities, he added, is essential because they’re “really the repository of all key data.”
