Does your organisation know where its data is housed? Third party data centre facilities have been around for 15 years and the trend towards increased outsourcing is set to continue as vendors offer more attractive contracts to customers. IT requirements are now more complex than ever with single outsource solutions a thing of the past. Data storage and applications are deployed across a blend of in-house data centres, outsourced facilities and the cloud (which is still a data centre somewhere). Do organisations regularly assess the locational risk of where their data is housed and how it is protected? Location risks are dynamic and evolve over time. This also includes adjacent business activities that could present new risks to established data centres.
Is it still acceptable for your data centre to be located in a low flood risk area or even just close to rivers or below ground level? Are flood defence measures still sufficient to rely on 100%? What if the flooding experienced in the South West occurred on a similar scale in the South East of the UK? There are more data centres there and many are located in close proximity. What would be the impact on data centres in London if the Thames barrier failed to operate properly during a major flood? Do we know how our data would be impacted?
Similar businesses and industries tend to cluster in locations. Two examples in London are financial services and data centres. There are good reasons for this such as access to skills and good infrastructure but there are also risks - the common consequences of catastrophic events could be felt across whole industries should they occur.
Businesses ask us what is the right balance between business opportunity and location risk? How should we mitigate? Is our approach the right one? What do our peers do? Should we review our strategy? Can we mitigate the risks?
In light of this our view is that location risks are dynamic and should be regularly reviewed in the context of the wider business strategy of the organisation. Specifically we look at the impacts on the business, its people, technology and ability to continue to operate during such catastrophic events.
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