People say data is the new oil.  And like oil, data needs the right infrastructure to support and protect it.

In my role at Fieldfisher LLP, I see a lot of transactions involving IT infrastructure that form the building blocks for the digital economy.  In the past 18 months, the volume has certainly turned up on concerns around data security.

Although I wouldn’t categorise any of these topics as ‘new’, the pandemic has certainly accelerated digital transformation and, going hand in hand with this, data security has been at the top of the agenda.  While digital transformation has led to increasing use of the cloud, many organisations still value the security and comfort of operating their own infrastructure for secure applications and sensitive information.  Identifying secure and resilient colocation facilities to house and power the IT infrastructure that organisations retain, should be a strategic priority.

Security has always been a crucial issue for data centres.  Physical security, with strong perimeter controls and appropriate vetting of staff, is one of the key requirements for colocation facilities for public and private sector organisations.  Knowing where data processing takes place is a critical question that has been integrated into compliance through privacy laws like the GDPR and other regulations that impact on the networks and information systems that are used for digital and essential services.  I’m seeing much more analysis of how data is managed and what everyone’s responsibilities are for information that is processed in IT infrastructure.  The importance of this has only grown with the move towards remote and hybrid working as a result of the pandemic.

This is where Crown Hosting has been particularly well placed to help Government organisations that need a high level of vetting and security from their colocation facilities.  The use of a colocation provider like Crown Hosting has been particularly attractive when compared to cloud providers who may store data in virtualised, and fragmented, environments.  Even where cloud solutions provide the optimal technical solution for Government, having the option of delivering those cloud solutions in a private cloud or hybrid environment with knowledge of where the infrastructure and data is located can provide organisations with a lot more certainty for compliance purposes.

Security is also being driven by sector-specific regulation.  The furore that has surrounded the roll out of 5G networks in the UK and the developing security requirements that the Government has been seeking to impose on telecoms operators only serves to highlight how critical security is becoming.  Each new layer of regulation will no doubt raise questions for the data centre industry and the customers that it supports.

Having a UK location for data centre facilities is also increasingly attractive for organisations operating here and in Europe.  The questions raised by the European Court of Justice by invalidating the EU-US Privacy Shield on account of the degree of US law enforcement access to data transmitted to the US, has put international data transfers into the spotlight.  Hosting data in secure colocation facilities in the UK can be a big selling point, knowing that interception of data from foreign intelligence organisations can be minimised.

Not only is this important for Government, but also for the private sector, where businesses ranging from financial institutions to cloud providers are increasingly finding a need to demonstrate security to increasingly high standards.

In a time when data is the new oil, we are not seeing a reduction in the need for secure and resilient colocation facilities to protect it.