If data can be called the gold of the digital age, then data centers obviously have to be as secure as banks. Even Tom Cruise would struggle in the Baltics' largest data center in Hüüru on the edge of Tallinn, because security is ensured with measures that sound like something out of a science-fiction film.
No one gets beyond this room without identification. Photo: Tõnu Tunnel
Looking beyond cybersecurity
When security comes up these days, the first question is often about cybersecurity. It is true that hackers breaking into servers can cause great damage, from accessing sensitive data to knocking out entire companies. In reality, though, we should also look beyond that, or rather closer. If someone physically steals or damages the data, all the cyber defences in the world will not save it.
The impossible mission begins outside the center
At the Greenergy data center, security begins outside the gates. Behind the gates are automatic road blockers that make sure no one can drive into the center by brute force. The center is surrounded by a three-metre security fence on a concrete foundation, which a car will not easily knock down either. Climbing skills are no use, because the gates and the fence have motion sensors.
And even if someone with bad intentions were by some miracle to get inside the gates, their journey would be short. More than 350 cameras are placed across the whole center. The cameras have both motion and thermal sensors, meaning that neither night nor thick fog is an obstacle.
Some of the cameras are so smart that they can identify a person by themselves and register their movement across the whole center. Even so, there are always real people in the operations center watching the camera feeds.
You cannot get in with a severed hand
The effective security measures continue inside the building. Every time, the data center checks that the person walking through the door really is who they claim to be. Biometric identification is used for that; specifically, the machine reads the structure of the veins in the hand. It may sound a little over the top, but there is a very logical reason for it.
Vein structure is checked so that no one can do what they do in the films, where security systems are passed with someone else's fingerprint or even their finger. The hand has to be alive and blood has to be flowing in the veins, otherwise the system does not let you in. It is a step beyond fingerprints.
The data center can only be entered through the main door, which has armed security 24/7. Of course the building has other doors, for loading goods for instance, but they are built on the principle that when the outer door is open, the next one is closed. That means goods can only be unloaded; the next door does not open until everything is confirmed and checked.
The center has AI-supported security gates, which means you cannot bring a friend in on your card. The system counts how many people are standing in the gate, and if the number does not match, it does not let anyone through.
All of this ensures that only the people who need to get into the center get in.
If you want to be super-secure
A data center customer can choose between a shared data hall, a private room and a maximum-security data vault. Although there is no doubt that security is taken care of throughout the building, it can be tightened further still. Private rooms suit, for example, a customer who does not want to show what equipment they have and how it works. Maximum security and reliability are provided by a Level 4 data vault to the EN 50600 standard, sunk deep into the limestone underground.
A smartly chosen location
In terms of natural disasters and terrorism, Estonia is a fairly calm place, but the data center has nevertheless been built 43 metres above sea level on solid limestone ground. The center is also away from hazardous industrial buildings and traffic such as fuel trains. The emergence of hazardous facilities near the center in the future is ruled out as well.
Security does not mean armed guards alone
Alongside security, reliability is exactly as important: what use are high-tech security systems if the infrastructure gives up? The data center's reliability is underpinned by redundant power, cooling and connectivity, top-class fire-prevention systems and continuous monitoring of the center's infrastructure with more than 3,000 sensors.
In summary, it is fair to say with a calm heart that the Greenergy Data Centers facility is probably one of the most secure and reliable institutions outside the security organisations.