UK prepares resiliency, cybersecurity legislation for colocation

Data centers have been enormously successful in the past two decades and now play a critical role in all major economies. But that success comes with a price: governments across the world are wary of the growing importance of data center operators — and the potential damage that outages can cause — and now they want more transparency and oversight (see Digital resiliency: global trends in regulation).

The UK government has become the first to propose detailed data center resiliency legislation that is not specific to a particular sector (such as financial services). Inevitably, the plan is proving controversial. Data center operators in the UK have raised multiple objections over the proposed resiliency and cybersecurity regulations that are aimed specifically at colocation providers.