By: Milton Plet, Senior Vice President, Global Clients at Securitas, Data Center Group
A data-hungry world necessitates more data centers, and companies worldwide are building quickly to meet demand. The global data center market was valued at over $194 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow 10.9% from 2023 to 2030. Data center capacity is also increasing rapidly: Cushman & Wakefield reports that the data center sector had 7.4 gigawatts online in 2023, a 51% increase over 2022. This number will likely grow as more data-intensive technologies push demand even higher.
Meeting that demand means companies will build more data centers. Each center will also require more security to help ensure their safe operation. Yet, security solutions struggle to keep pace with the evolving challenges faced by data centers (developers/builders). The influx of physical infrastructure and the changing nature of risks have altered the threat landscape. Many security providers, however, still operate using outdated procurement models. Traditional RFPs no longer address evolving risks effectively. As a result, data center security often remains as an afterthought instead of bringing it front and center.
Clients should receive the best security solution possible to protect their significant investments in data centers. The traditional procurement models cannot deliver on this goal. The future of data center security needs a new model that can provide more favorable security outcomes, build longer-term client relationships, and offer more significant cost savings over traditional procurement models. Today’s security clients need “co-creation.”
Traditional Security Procurement Is Letting Down Data Centers
Building a data center requires considerable time, resources, and capital investments. Depending on a company’s specific needs, a new data center could take 18-36 months from breaking ground to going online. In the rush to meet incredible data management and processing demands, the largest enterprises could build as many as 20-30 data centers yearly.
With myriad priorities under consideration, securing those centers is often an afterthought in the planning and construction processes. Historically, companies have struggled to identify their specific security needs, so they default to camera coverage and a few officers who manage access and enforce rules.
Data center security requires a multi-layered approach, addressing challenges that merge the physical and cyber frontiers. This becomes more apparent as data centers grow as quickly as they are now. The traditional model of installing cameras and hiring a few guards cannot meet today’s security demands nor operate with enough agility to handle future threats.
Because most clients and providers hold security conversations later in the design phase, the traditional RFP model is too inefficient to help companies protect their data center investments. Instead, companies and their security integrators should evaluate security needs from the start, allowing data center leaders to customize solutions.
The Case for Co-creation
The customer and integrator must work together to define security needs, create the most effective solution to address risks, and implement them side-by-side to help ensure its success. This collaborative co-creation process involves sharing experiences and expertise, transforming security buying into a long-term, relationship-based exchange.
Through co-creation, leaders from both parties tailor solutions beyond predefined requirements by assessing a data center’s unique needs, risks, goals, and operational environment. Leaders begin with client workshops to gather this information and brainstorm innovative solutions to what the client shares.
Over time, the parties develop a deeper understanding of each other’s business, helping craft longer partnerships built on mutual trust and respect. Plus, because solutions are highly customized, clients realize greater cost savings over traditional, “as-is” procurement models.
Security providers should include several teams in the co-creation process, including:
- Client managers
- Digitalization
- Data center operations
- Technology
Providers should also help clients prepare their discovery workshops for the best results. Plenty of communication beforehand, along with templates, questions, requirement lists, and other documentation, can help put clients at ease in the initial stages. Remember that clients turn to you as a security professional; help them understand their needs and goals. Doing so creates an open, welcoming space where co-creation can flourish.
Co-creation Helps Data Centers Keep Pace with the Future
Another benefit of co-creation is that it incorporates agility. Providers and clients can more rapidly adapt solutions to changing needs instead of relying on static proposals or contracts.
Companies know their response speed to emerging threats so their data centers must get faster. As physical and cyber security converge, it will take the right combination of technology, digitalization, and human resources to stop threats and help ensure data centers are secure:
- Technology: security systems like cameras and access control
- Digitalization: software, reporting tools, and other digital systems supporting security operations
- Human resources: guards, officers, and the human-based support systems around them
While traditional procurement models deliver discrete products in these three areas, a co-creation model unifies them into a comprehensive security solution. This unification may look like better-enforced limitations on data center access, supported by remote monitoring and response through technology. Emerging technologies like augmented reality could further support rapid and effective security management led by human operators.
Even farther down the road, AI will stake a larger claim in the business world. The widespread adoption of AI tools will undoubtedly impact future security needs and solutions, though AI’s full extent and influence around data centers remain undetermined.
Yet, the unknowns surrounding AI adoption illustrate the need for co-creation models. Technological changes — and the risks emerging from those changes — require speed and agility to address. Security providers should help clients address current challenges while developing and recommending capabilities to help shape how new technologies like AI impact future security. Co-creation models are designed to solve that exact need.
Help Clients Through Complex Data Center Security Challenges
Protecting data centers is a complex operation. Security providers should help clients understand its complexity and offer them paths toward the best solutions possible. A data-driven future will ask more from security than ever; older ways will not stand the test of time.
Now is the time to lean into co-creation. Involve your teams early in the data center development process. Act as the security expert and collaborate with your clients to define their needs and build targeted solutions. While future technologies and threats remain unknown, you and your client can adapt to changing needs and scale effectively.
About the Author
Milton Plet is Senior Vice President, Global Clients at Securitas, Data Center Group. He brings over 22 years of experience in security for global clients and data centers to Securitas, working with enterprise data center clients on scalable, agile security solutions. Milton currently resides in Seattle, Wash.
