UK to class data centres as 'critical national infrastructure'
LONDON, Sept 12 (Reuters) -Britain's data centres will be classified "critical national infrastructure", the government said on Thursday, giving the servers and I.T. systems that underpin the country's communications extra protection from cyber attacks.
Britain said the move would reassure companies building data centres, such as DC01UK, which it said had submitted proposals for a 3.75 billion pound ($4.88 billion) investment in Europe's largest data centre in Hertfordshire.
On Wednesday, Amazon's AMZN.O cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services, said it would to spend 8 billion pounds in Britain over the next five years to build and operate data centres.
The government said the new designation would put data centres on an equal footing with water and energy, and allow it to minimise damage to the economy in the event of critical incidents.
"Bringing data centres into the Critical National Infrastructure regime will allow better coordination and cooperation with the government against cyber criminals and unexpected events," technology minister Peter Kyle said.
A number of recent incidents have highlighted how vulnerable services are to IT blackouts. In July, for instance, the Crowd Strike outage disrupted appointments at health services across the country.
($1 = 0.7680 pounds)
Reporting by Sarah Young, Editing by Paul Sandle
Related Assets
Latest News
Disclaimer: The XM Group entities provide execution-only service and access to our Online Trading Facility, permitting a person to view and/or use the content available on or via the website, is not intended to change or expand on this, nor does it change or expand on this. Such access and use are always subject to: (i) Terms and Conditions; (ii) Risk Warnings; and (iii) Full Disclaimer. Such content is therefore provided as no more than general information. Particularly, please be aware that the contents of our Online Trading Facility are neither a solicitation, nor an offer to enter any transactions on the financial markets. Trading on any financial market involves a significant level of risk to your capital.
All material published on our Online Trading Facility is intended for educational/informational purposes only, and does not contain – nor should it be considered as containing – financial, investment tax or trading advice and recommendations; or a record of our trading prices; or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instruments; or unsolicited financial promotions to you.
Any third-party content, as well as content prepared by XM, such as: opinions, news, research, analyses, prices and other information or links to third-party sites contained on this website are provided on an “as-is” basis, as general market commentary, and do not constitute investment advice. To the extent that any content is construed as investment research, you must note and accept that the content was not intended to and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such, it would be considered as marketing communication under the relevant laws and regulations. Please ensure that you have read and understood our Notification on Non-Independent Investment. Research and Risk Warning concerning the foregoing information, which can be accessed here.