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Month: March 2023

By Raul Martynek, DataBank CEO

If we are to believe the latest headlines, it may seem like we’re just a few years away from autonomous cars, powerful AI tools rendering many jobs (and even entire careers) obsolete, and other examples of futuristic technology transforming our daily lives.

While the jury is still out on these use cases and their long-term implications, it is safe to assume we will continue to see the introduction of new technologies as well as the evolution of existing digital tools. In response to these developments, consumers will demand new – and better — products, services, and experiences. Businesses will also react, both to meet these new expectations but also to meet their own goals of becoming more efficient, more agile, and more competitive.

All of this will change current conventional approaches to developing, implementing, and using IT infrastructure. New developments will also force data center providers like DataBank to adapt new strategies and technologies to provide the power, performance, edge presence, and other criteria tomorrow’s businesses will require.

How will IT infrastructure evolve and what will it look like in the next ten years? To answer these questions, it may help to look at three emerging technological trends – AI, 5G, and edge computing – and see how they’re already influencing future generations of IT infrastructure.

AI Workloads: An Exponential Game Changer Requiring Exponentially More Power and Cooling

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a few months since ChatGPT first became available for public testing in November 2022. Yet, it’s clear that this technology has the ability to transform, revolutionize, and even upend so many of our daily practices and processes. This includes everything from creating content to automating workflows to streamlining administrative tasks and more.

As the use of artificial intelligence continues to explode, AI-driven workloads will require much more processing power, data storage, and network bandwidth. Many companies will have to upgrade some facets of their architecture with high-performance computing, cloud-based data storage, and even new network hardware.

Data center providers supporting these companies will need to provide much more power to a smaller amount of space to support these AI workloads as well as new use cases we may not even be thinking about yet. Consider the fact that ChatGPT currently has nearly 25 million daily visitors, whose search activity translates to approximately 600,000 kilowatt hours per day of consumption – 2,000 times more than what the average U.S. household consumes each day.

DataBank is already seeing high-performance computing cases where our customers now need 30-100 kilowatts for each cabinet in the data center. This is not an incremental increase. These power density requirements are an exponential leap over previous scenarios where data center customers only needed three to 10 kilowatts.

With more power will come the need for more cooling. This means that future data centers will have to rely on new cooling methods – such as rear chilled doors, water to the chip or immersion technologies – as well as other strategies such as more intelligent data center design to provide the right mix of power and cooling.

The Continued Rollout of 5G and the Push to the Mobile Edge

5G has the potential to increase connectivity between people, digital products, and services while delivering higher data speeds, lower latency, increased availability, and other benefits. For businesses and service providers to take full advantage, they need to move beyond hardware-centric, previously centralized infrastructure and implement a more scalable, cloud-native architecture.

Driven by the promise and potential of 5G networks, more and more companies will push their infrastructure and hosted data centers even further to edge markets. This will be true as more companies continue to adopt 5G (and even look to the release of 6G in 2030). This new approach is critical to reach customers at the edge of their network and deliver the enhanced experiences associated with 5G.

As I covered in the sidebar of this article, four critical infrastructure components are needed to manifest the potential of 5G. You can find this at the very end of this article.

In the past, the entire industry leaned toward a centralized model where servers, fiber optic cables, and data storage were consolidated in a relatively small number of “core” data centers locations. With the emergence of 5G and the new era of mobile edge computing, far more data will be created at the edge — near users of the data — and will need to be processed and stored there to support IoT, robotics, gaming, autonomous machinery, and latency-sensitive applications and workloads.

In these mobile edge environments, network providers will increasingly be drawn to Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets, expanded geography within Tier 1 markets and the multi-tenant data centers located in them. They are also expected to take advantage of modular data center platforms that can be deployed anywhere with closer proximity to fiber and cellular tower infrastructure. They will also be able to perform localized internet exchanges in facilities that are more open and neutral than past options.

The Future is Not So Far Away

These trends are already happening now and affecting the way companies are designing their IT architecture. They also raise new questions when it comes to evaluating future data center providers and what options will be right for their business. It’s clear that their infrastructure will have to change to keep pace with industry and technology developments, so getting a proactive head start on strategic planning now – and identifying the right hosting model – can go a long way to ensuring future success.

To learn more about DataBank, and how our we’re designing our data centers to meet tomorrow’s infrastructure needs, please visit www.databank.com today.

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The 4 Critical Components of Deploying a True Stand-Alone 5G Network:
National Security’s Cautionary Tale for Business Security Leaders
By Mark Houpt, Chief Information Security Officer, DataBank

In late 2021, I was interviewed by Forbes as part of an article on 8 Crystal Ball Predictions About Cyberattacks in 2022. At the time, I predicted that we’d all have to be much more vigilant in defending against cyberattacks from state-sponsored groups around the world.

Fortunately, not all of these predictions came true, although I still think the industry was wise to consider them at the time. For example, we just didn’t see any attacks against major COVID-19 vaccine makers or against high-profile events such as the World Cup. This was most likely due to the combination of increased diligence and cybercriminals looking for more profitable opportunities elsewhere, and frankly — as in the case of the World Cup — the expenditure of lots of money on tools and software to prevent the attacks.

So…why publish an article about 2023 predictions in March? It’s simple. We should never treat data security introspection and systems evaluation as we do New Year’s resolutions: made with the best of intentions but quickly abandoned.

Back to the Forbes article, one of the quoted experts predicted that cyber-threats would continue to evolve and increase in number, especially ransomware. I believe this will always be the case because cybercriminals continue to be motivated by potential financial gains and the acquisition of intellectual property. In the case of ransomware, the volume of these attacks has increased because many of them have been successful in getting the affected company to pay the ransom as well as the fact that they believe insurance companies will pay the ransom on the company’s behalf. Another reason for their success is that ransomware effectively obfuscates the theft of intellectual property.

While many of the 2022 predictions in that article represented valid concerns, the good news is that we simply did not experience all of them in the way we envisioned. Yet, one stood out: the fact that cybercriminals will continue to adopt more sophisticated strategies to do harm as they try to stay a step ahead. With this in mind, I have three additional cybersecurity predictions for 2023.

Although you’ll notice a theme of national security in my predictions, as CISO of a for-profit business, I am ever mindful that security breaches of any kind can – and do – bring negative implications for businesses and their customers.

Prediction #1: New Conflicts Will Begin as Cyber Events

We’ve officially reached the point where modern warfare will most likely start as a cyber event rather than a physical (kinetic) demonstration of force. While not widely reported, this happened in Eastern Europe in February 2022: Cybercriminals sponsored by the aggressor hit the attacked country’s infrastructure and other systems with crippling DDoS and other cyberattacks more than a week before the land invasion commenced.

I believe this will now become the norm. If there is a major conflict or an advance in an existing conflict, the first waves will be cyber—cyberattacks against critical infrastructure, service providers, and essential government entities and the businesses that support them. This can be an extremely effective way to disrupt communications and take important operations and services offline as well as prove a capability.

Prediction #2: The Increased Weaponization of Social Media

I also believe that we’ll see social media platforms start to be used as an actual weapon. This will evolve past the standard ways that social media platforms are used to distribute and disrupt information flow, share videos, and solicit support and assistance. Now virtually anyone can use social media and other technology to track and target the opposition and its followers. We’ve already seen examples in the current war in Eastern Europe where both sides have used open-source intelligence from social media sites as well as IP address tracking to develop very effective targeted bombing campaigns.

Fortunately, the United States is not in such a conflict, but the takeaway is still important. Companies need to be very careful about what information they or their employees share and protect other technical details as much as possible to bolster their cybersecurity defenses.

Prediction #3: Banning of Foreign Equipment and Technology

I think we’ll start to see more scrutiny related to sanctions and even banning foreign-made equipment and technology in the United States and possibly within NATO countries. For example, recreational drones are becoming more popular in the U.S. and now offer the latest advances, such as high-resolution cameras that are so accurate they can use geolocation data to identify and track images within just a few feet.

However, there’s a real concern about the data these products collect, and more specifically, if it could be sent back to the countries that manufacture them without the knowledge of the user. If so, what is the purpose, and what is this data being used for?

Again, this prediction has real cybersecurity implications not just for government organizations, but also for the industrial sector and private companies. Imagine if a foreign power used data collected from products and technology that were strategically placed in the United States as part of a powerful cyberattack or even a covert intelligence collection tool. It’s possible a rogue nation-state or other group could target vital infrastructure such as power and energy, gas pipelines, telecommunications, water, or even roadways—which could be devastating.

Stay Vigilant

In many ways, 2022 was a turbulent year, and unfortunately, one where global geopolitical developments could potentially put U.S. companies at more risk. For data center providers and their customers, this means now is the time to thoroughly assess their existing cybersecurity defenses. There’s a saying in the cybersecurity industry today: “It’s not if you’ll come under attack, but when.” Knowing this, while also considering where new cyberattacks could come from, may help give you the upper hand against new adversaries in 2023.

By Mark Houpt, Chief Information Security Officer, DataBank