Physical and cyber security moves up the agenda for Data Centres amid growing geopolitical risks

As for the risks facing DC companies in the Middle East, analysts estimate that the Middle East has around 170-270 third-party data centres largely in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with another 100 or so more under development in various areas.

The reports of an incident and the resulting downtime at Amazon’s Data Centre (DC) in the UAE due to the US-Iran war has highlighted the critical nature of DCs, and has moved security and resiliency up the agenda of the sector globally, including in India.

Analysts and DC operators tell businessline that India’s geopolitically stability is relatively better today but stress that preparedness is critical and the sector should build its physical and cyber resiliency. Consulting firms that help operators set up DCs note that in addition to hard and physically resilient exteriors, one should also consider measures to combat electronic warfare.

“Most big DCs have hardened shells, blast-resistant or windowless facades, perimeter stand-offs, access controls, fire suppression, and multiple power and fibre paths. Operators are now going to seriously consider radar and radio frequency jammers and hardening the centres’ roofs with be able to withstand arial attacks,” Prashant Thakur, Executive Director & Head - Research & Advisory, ANAROCK Group, said.

Post-incident protection

As for the post-incident protection, Thakur says that there is now a specialised war-risk coverage insurance product for companies, and recent events may lead to large enterprise tenants urging DC players to look at dedicated war-risk and related coverage. “Most standard property and business-interruption policies for data centres don’t cover war, and they often limit coverage for political violence unless specific riders have been added,” he said.

Sunil Gupta, Founder, Yotta, stresses that India as a whole and the Indian DC industry is safe but is important to ensure redundancies are in place and are tested continuously. We have to also ensure network redundancies by diversifying capacity across different directions- some capacity on west-ward subsea fibers (toward Middle East and Europe and US east coast) and some capacity on east-ward subsea fibers (towards Singapore / Malaysia / US west coast), he added.

Roopesh Kumar, Head of Data Center Projects at Sify Technologies, notes that as far as protection goes, “Acts of God and Acts of War are both substantially covered” by the company. “All DC locations are complimented with live 24x7 Disaster Recover (DR) locations that are deliberately in a different geography, there is also a multi-mode redundant network that ensures that both the network and DC stay up immaterial of the threat,” he said.

As for the risks facing DC companies in the Middle East, analysts estimate that the Middle East has around 170-270 third-party data centres largely in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, with another 100 or so more under development in various areas.

Equinix, a major player in the region, said in a statement to businessline that it is actively monitoring developments in the region. “At this time, all of our UAE data centers remain fully operational and there has been no impact to customer services. The safety of our employees, customers, and partners is our foremost priority — we can confirm that all Equinix employees in the region are accounted for and safe,” the company said.

(With inputs from Vallari Sanzgiri)

Published on March 2, 2026