Nuclear Elephant: Data Center Facility Vulnerabilities:
Data center facilities are at the heart of today’s electronic infrastructure, giving life to significant percentage of online commerce. Due to their planned construction on critical infrastructure, such as converging power grids and dense telecom networks, they are also, however largely unguarded potential targets for terrorists. Data centers are among the only facilities located globally within proximity to mission critical infrastructure where even a lightly funded individual is able to install heavy equipment virtually unchecked and undisturbed for long periods of time, using a remote high-Qos network (the Internet) as a detonator. Because private data centers are largely ubiquitous in their procedures, which typically do not include hardware inspection, this would allow a terrorist group to launch a distributed, coordinated attack taking out many large cities’ infrastructures simultaneously, and without prior detection.
See what happens when we try to ignore all of the copper and silicone and coolant that makes our tumblrs go?? Data centers probably aren’t sexy enough to be the Next Big Thing, but wouldn’t it be so fitting? Following up an attack on the stuff of global finance with one on the stuff of global information exchange?
Also, whereas the towers were obvi phallic, data centers are decidedly feminine: hidden from the public eye, pregnant with data, working to preserve the national culture, constantly fanning themselves to avoid heat spells…
