Escape from Data Alcatraz

nihilist_1137 writes "Zdnet is reporting on a new information facility that is built to surive the worst.Triangular in shape, two of the sides house offices while the third, a large rectangular block if taken in isolation, contains two data centres, as well as the infrastructure to ensure that Web sites continue to function come fire, flood, natural catastrophy or foreign invasion."

Comments

Good Investment

[Rebel Patriot]

At first this seems almost like a joke. Who would invest this much time and energy into such a fortress just to house data? Well... banks for one. Imagine banks from around the world storing their data here in a highly encrypted form, updated at least daily. it would require alot of bandwith to say the least, but wouldn't that security be worth it to investors?

Less crucial information that needn't be updated regularly could find a home here at a discounted price. Take for example, building plans. Every city, county, and State in America has a plan somewhere for every building its ever built that lists (among other things) the locations of all wiring and plumbing. This isn't terribly confidential information (though it very well may become so for large buildings with a realistic threat of terrorist attacks) and could be modestly encrypted with read access only granted to the owner.

Copyright owners might be interested in it as a way of saving back-ups of their paper-work that cannot be destroyed by some freak accident.

I for one don't like these ideas because they represent too many eggs in one basket. When information security is required, it is my personal belief that having it stored in a known location that every hacker in the world would drool over to get inside is a bad idea. History has shown, however, that not everyone (indeed few people) listen to me.

Re:Good Investment

[Nelson]

Has a bank's data security been compromised lately?
That's how I'd temper the worthiness of something like this.

Re:Good Investment

[2Bits]

Copyright owners might be interested in it as a way of saving back-ups of their paper-work that cannot be destroyed by some freak accident

That's easy. Publish it on the usenet. Short of total Earth destruction, that piece of work will never get lost.

History

[legLess]

Remember the Maginot Line? Impregnable? How easy was it to get around that? Data is useful in direct proportion to its accessibility - cut the connections into this place and it's toast. No frontal attack necessary.

Also, the article says they can expand capacity 300%. Frankly, that sounds like pretty short-term planning to me. In my experience, it's a rare data store that doesn't double in size every year or two.

Still, it sounds like a cool place, and probably has a better climate than Sealand :)

Re:History

[Geek In Training]

Also, the article says they can expand capacity 300%. Frankly, that sounds like pretty short-term planning to me. In my experience, it's a rare data store that doesn't double in size every year or two.

Right you are, but of the giant space they've already allocated for racks, how much is currently used, like 5%? Your comment seems to assume that 100% of their racks are already full.

I'd imagine they set up a giant space for 24 months worth of business growth to fit in, and put in a contingency for 300% above *that*. That way they can see how the demand acts over the next year or two, and react accordingly by adding more physical space.

That's just my SWAG*, though.

*For newbies, that's "Scientific, Wild-Assed Guess."

and this means what?

[Xaleth Nuada]

It's an impressive building designed to withstand all sorts of disaster movie ideas. So what?

As we've all seen time and time again the real threat to computer systems does not come in the form an earthquake, tidal wave, or random highjacked 767. The real threats rear their ugly heads when some idiot user doesn't update his M$Outlook security package, or takes his password out of the dictionary.

I'm not trying to say that physical threats to computer systems aren't important. By all means they are usually the last thing people think about. But the data here is only being protected from physcially being damaged and or lost. There's nothing in that article about firewall's, encryption, open access ports, faulty software, defective hardware, etcetera ad naseum.

The protection of data by the building is just one part of the problem of everything becoming digital. It's by no means the end all solution.

Wow... This is just too easy....

[Peridriga]

Simple way to take down the site....

3 Letters.... E M P

Haha!!...

Re:Wow... This is just too easy....

[wedg]

Actually, the reinforced concrete (crossed steel bars within the concrete) usually creates a sort of makeshift Faraday cage which effectively negates most EMP within. The guys over at NORAD and ze Pentagon have known this for a long time.

But it does depend on whether the building is reinforced, and how long the steel cabling is within it, etc. But the effect should not be so severe, reguardless. And remember, the EMP only affects unshielded electronics. They could simply invest $100 in wiring and build a giant Faraday cage around their server farm.

Re:What for?

[foobar104]

http://www.hostworks.com.au/networks.html

Remember back in 2000 when an accident took out a huge fraction of Australia's international bandwidth? Better make sure those "divergent path links" don't just end up in the same undersea cable....

how quaint

[markj02]

Physical security--how quaint. Even if you greatly overengineer it, a widely distributed network of nodes using cryptographic techniques is likely to be much cheaper and no less secure. And it's also likely to be more resilient.

Not So Easy

[virg_mattes]

> 3 Letters.... E M P

Two words in return: Faraday Cage. This deals with the big electromagnet as well. As for the junkyard magnet, you could just arrest or disable the crane operator before he could get it near the building.(bfg)

Virg

Re:Cheap geographical redundancy, not $$$ gimmicks

[monkeydo]

If your enemy is joe with a back-hoe, then you're better off with three geographically dispersed, less secure sites. Wouldn't you agree?

No, I wouldn't agree. What we are talking about is a battle of probabililties. The most likely vulnerabilities can be protected against at one site more cheaply than multiple sites. The "backhoe" attack is easily defended against with seperate entry points to different wire centers.

One very good reason for disparate location is regional events out of your control. It is difficult to protect yourself from a massive power outage affecting most of Califonia, or natural disaster. Even if your facility has power, etc required support services may not be available. Your site may have 14 days of diesel fuel in the basement, but how long are your NOC monkeys going to watch the screens if they can't be relieved because all the roads are closed?

I fully support having multiple redundant locations, but that is no excuse for doing them cheaply.

On the other hand, if you have two locations and each one is not able to seperately withstand foreseeable negative events what do you do when they are both affected? What if a hurricane takes out you east coast and an earthquake hits the west? Each facility still needs to be as independatly survivable as possible, otherwise you don't really have redundancy, you just have "extra".

Not BackHoe-Proof - Two cuts and you're off-net

[billstewart]

There are some kind of applications that work fine in isolation, and if this is one of them, cool. But most real-world businesses need to be connected to the rest of the world - either the Internet, or privatge networks (e.g. bank data centers talking to ATMs). The article doesn't mention physically redundant communications, though I assume they probably did use a fiber ring of some sort, which means it takes *two* backhoe hits before they're off the net and not just one. But if they're this paranoid, and not just hyping themselves, they need some radio or satellite connectivity, enough voice diversity (or cell phones) so they can talk if their phone connection gets cut, and ideally geographical diversity so that if something does go seriously wrong (flood, earthquake, etc.) they can run from their other location.