Data centers are valuable targets, even outside of war

When Ukraine attacked Russian data centers earlier this week, it was a stark reminder that huge buildings are targets in war. in March, Iranian military attacks Amazon data centers In the United Arab Emirates, which remained out of service after several months.

While wartime attacks on data centers may seem like a distant threat to Americans, a cybersecurity expert told Mashable that they remain a valuable target for physical and digital breaches even in the US.

“Everything you do online goes to the data center,” says Charles Brooks, an assistant lecturer in cybersecurity at Georgetown University.

For example, the average person’s viewing of Netflix, use of Google Docs, and personal online banking depend on servers typically housed in data centers.

Additionally, cloud computing services used by government, health care systems, financial institutions, and businesses require data centers. Brooks says they are also important for Earth-to-space communications.

This is why stealing sensitive information from data center servers or completely disrupting their operations has become attractive to state-backed criminal hackers and operatives.

Brooks says the 20-year-old adage of “data is the new oil” rings especially true today. Just as oil supplies and revenues have long been the target of war and government pressure campaigns, data has become an extremely valuable and part of critical infrastructure.

“If something happens it could be devastating,” Brooks says of a potential data center breach in the US.

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3 threats to US data centers

While a foreign drone-powered attack on a US data center is highly unlikely, Brooks says anyone could become the target of a physical breach with explosives. Although the damage may 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 should be fortified with more than surveillance cameras, alarms and barbed wire fences. He recommends electrified perimeters, security guards and defensible locations around control centers and water-cooling systems.

inside job

Brooks says the most likely source of the breach is an insider who can access servers, data and infrastructure because they have permission to be in the building. 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 the data center’s critical functions.

Brooks suggests using AI monitoring to detect abnormal behavior and protect against malicious insiders. He believes the trade-off of potential false positives, in which a worker is incorrectly flagged as acting suspiciously, would be worth it given the type of critical information stored on data centers.

Brooks also supports rigorous background checks like those for employees in hospitals and power plants.

“Whoever you hire has a responsibility to move beyond a typical security job,” says Brooks.

AI-powered hacking

AI tools allow bad actors to rapidly scale up their hacking efforts, including efforts against data centers.

For example, Anthropic recently released a security report detailing how individuals, including those supported by foreign governments, have used AI to spy and automate cyber espionage operations.

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. This could mean phishing an employee to access and use their system credentials.

“They are escalating these attacks [with] A lot of potential, and they’re using AI software to find vulnerabilities they didn’t know about before,” says Brooks.

Why should Americans care about US data center security?

Brooks argues that data center security is a national security issue, given that the facilities have become critical infrastructure.

Even though a digital breach in a U.S. data center may seem invisible, it has the potential to have a cascading impact on the lives of ordinary people. People may be unable to work or conduct business or become victims of a ransomware attack that involves their personal and sensitive data.

Brooks said data center security should be guided by a partnership between the government and the private companies that own them.

Strengthening U.S. facilities is essential, he said, because they are “really the repository of all the key data.”