Protecting Data Centers from Kinetic and Cyber Attacks: What Regulators Worldwide Are Proposing
InfoWatch has refreshed its April report on data center protection, examining regulatory responses to both kinetic and cyber threats across major jurisdictions. The analysis underscores that a functioning data center is now a prerequisite for business and state survival, as demonstrated by recent attacks on Yandex facilities that caused widespread service outages, repair costs, lost revenue, and share-price declines.
Experts identify three foundational elements of physical resilience. Tier III or Tier IV standards ensure continued operation during power or cooling failures. Access control now routinely includes anti-drone systems alongside biometric measures. Geographic distribution requires multiple redundant clusters rather than simple two- or three-site replication, with growing acceptance of initial-level air-defense systems or hardened underground facilities.
Why cyber defenses remain essential
Even as attention shifts to physical protection, cyber risks cannot be deprioritized. Kinetic strikes are typically followed by cyber operations that hinder recovery. Core recommendations include terabit-scale DDoS mitigation at backbone level, Zero Trust network segmentation, and accelerated import substitution of security tools and next-generation firewalls to eliminate remote-control risks.
United States
The Cyberstrategy for America 2026 prioritizes offensive cyber operations, adversary-behavior modeling, Zero Trust modernization of government networks, and exclusion of foreign vendors from supply chains. Data centers have been formally designated critical infrastructure, with emphasis moving from isolated security teams to AI-driven autonomous SOC platforms.
European Union
Key instruments are ProtectEU and the Cyber Solidarity Act. Since February 2025 the European Early Warning System has provided real-time threat detection across member states. DORA imposes strict resilience and certification requirements on the financial sector. The Tallinn Manual 3.0 classifies attacks on physical data-center infrastructure as potential acts of aggression when effects are comparable to armed attack.
Russia
The national concept for countering cybercrime through 2030 stresses technological sovereignty, targeting a reduction of foreign security solutions to 4 percent by 2030 while growing the domestic market to nearly one trillion rubles. Presidential Decree No. 604 of 24 August 2026 authorizes temporary state management of critical infrastructure operators that fail to ensure adequate protection or timely recovery. The Ministry of Digital Development is evaluating hardened, underground, or remote sites in energy-surplus regions such as the Urals and Eastern Siberia. Additional measures include project financing, special investment contracts, preferential lending, and temporary permission for affected companies to process personal data in friendly jurisdictions until March 2028. A new data-center law effective March 2026 introduces operator registration, security requirements, and a ban on mining at data-center sites.
The report concludes that data centers have become high-value targets, as illustrated by Iranian statements designating Western cloud infrastructure as legitimate military objectives and reported strikes on AWS facilities in Bahrain and the UAE. Regulators worldwide are therefore accelerating both physical hardening and regulatory oversight.
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