Transcript of this podcast episode #111: We Need Smarter Ways of Building Data Centers

Nathaniel Nelson
Welcome everyone to the industrial security podcast. My name is Nate Nelson I’m here with Andrew Ginter the vice president of industrial security at Waterfall Security Solutions who’s going to discuss the subject and guest of today’s show Andrew how are you?

Andrew Ginter

I’m very well. Thank you Nate our guest today is About Vlad-Gabriel Anghel. He is the global product manager at Data Center Dynamics Academy or DCD Academy for short. It’s a bit of a mouthful you know, but what he’s going to be talking about is industrial cybersecurity at. Data centers and you know data centers are about more than just protecting the information I mean obviously ah, that’s very important, but it’s also all about physical operations and you know electric power and cooling Vlad develops educational programs that are focused on data centers and. Industrial cybersecurity is a very important topic in the data center space.

Andrew Ginter
Hello Vlad and welcome to the show. before we get started. Can you say a few words about your background and about the good work that you’re doing at data center dynamics.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Of course, Andrew first of all thanks thanks for having me on v I’m the global product manager at Data Center dynamics is training arm which is known as DCD Academy um I’ve been around the digital infrastructure industry for about a decade now. And I don’t think that will change anytime soon as I essentially have a deep passion for pretty much everything digital infrastructure and especially data centers. Um I’m a thinker by heart and a problem solver by trade. And as well as that during my high school years I was I became a Cisco certified network associate both in routing and switching and in security. So naturally I now. Put my efforts together to ensure that the next generation of data center professionals are equipped with the knowledge required to run these complex technical facilities. So yeah, in a nutshell that’s me.

Andrew Ginter
Thanks for that. you know our topic today is data centers and and we’ve never had anybody on from the world of data centers. can you you know sort of give us the big picture. What What’s a data center look like physically um and you know what are what are you know. What are the operating priorities I mean at a power plant. Everybody’s worried about safety first you know what’s it. What’s it like working in a data center.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Right? I mean ah, as I said it’s ah previously I always whenever whenever I get into this this type of discussion I always I always say what is a data center could be It’s the simplest question but has the most complicated answer in short, it’s a technical facility where a business stores. Processes and disseminates his data now this can look on the outside. They essentially kind of look the same they are warehouses you wouldn’t even be able to figure out that there are that’s a computing warehouse or to say. there are multiple types of date centers. We’re not, we’re not going to cover all of them but they vary based on the business that ah that is using them. right now. because of the advent of the cloud and because because of the avent of internet of things. 5 g and now ai one of the main things that and we’re seeing within the industry is the hyperscale segment. So the cloud providers with essential a cloud services provider. Essentially they do not. They’re not able to to keep up. They’re not able to bring bring these facilities bring these facilities around quick enough and when you add that that when you add into the mix that there is a talent shortage in this industry. The problem becomes quite quite big. one of the main things that the data center always needs to ah.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Needs to do is what what we internally within within the industry call needs to be available so availability is paramount when a data center goes down or when the I t load that that data center supports go down. There are a number of repercussions first and foremost there can be contractual repercussions. So definitely a financial. It will take a financial hit and as well as that there can be reputational repercussions. let’s take for example, a classic example of a bank. If the Bank’s Data Center goes down. You’re not going to be able to check your account balance or you might miss a payment that you need to do for your mortgage for example and so on and so forth. So a data center going down has a massive massive impact. on both as I said the reputational and the financial financial outcome of of a business.

Andrew Ginter
That is the picture I have of a data center of you know racks of computers inside and and you know a warehouse-looking thing outside but you know this is the industrial security podcast. Can you talk about? you know what’s on the inside. Um,, there’s obviously computers. But there’s also Infrastructure. What’s what’s that infrastructure look like what’s the automation. On the on the infrastructure side look like and and what are the security concerns.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Certainly um I mean to begin with every single data center is going to have um to let what we call spaces within within the industry right? every data center is going to be split into the white space and the great space. Great space. The white space. Is essentially what you can see as the I t room is essentially the place where you store your servers your switches your networking gear and everything in between um and the gray space is everything that keeps this that keeps the white space alive sort to say. I always have an analogy when when presenting this to to some students you need to look as ah, the white space as the brain and the gray space as pretty much everything else in terms of lungs stomach heart and everything else that allows the brain to function when it comes to um. When it comes to what’s what’s inside the gray space because as you said we’re talking industrial security within within the Grayspace. You’ve got the power distribution system. Ah you also have the environmental control system or the koing system simply because um and obviously all the other like control systems and softwares. these are usually managed through through skada instance. Um and because we’ve got because as I said as I said previously hyper scalers for example, but not just that like pretty much every sector within this market cannot build them fast enough. you now end up with.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Facility managers that previously were tasked with managing one facility are now tasked with managing 5 or more facilities now in order to be able to do this because you can’t be in the same place 5 times. Um the the whole gray space and the whole equipment within the gray space. It’s. Is now connected to the internet now again as there’s this separation between white space and gray space. So is the separations of the professionals working within these spaces. Ah, you’ll always you’ll almost always find I professionals within the white space that are aware of cybersecurity in general and understand what the what the surface. what what what? the risks are when connecting a device to the internet whereas on the operational technology side or on in. Or within within the gray space. that is not the kind that is not common knowledge so you do risk of having pretty much your whole your whole if if not taken care of. You’ve got your whole ah your whole gray space or your the whole infrastructure that keeps the white space alive. Prone to the same type of attack vectors that you can find within the it space. a classic example, we all know it and I’m sure it’s been talked previously in in in previous episodes. The Stuxnet.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Ah, Stuxnet incident was exactly was exactly up was a worm that essentially buried into ah Zimon’s plc and then had a knock-on effect on everything else that those those controls were well controlling for lack of a better word. so the same the same. The same thing can can easily happen within a data center and as we mentioned previously. You do not mention the d work or downtime.

Andrew Ginter
That’s right – in a lot of Jurisdictions data centers and you know similar facilities are considered critical information infrastructure and so when there’s reliability issues at these facilities. It’s not just you know. Financial concerns and contractual concerns. A lot of the time. The government is looking over your shoulder breathing down your neck because this is critical infrastructure when when this kind of infrastructure drops. It’s not just a business that suffers. It is society that suffers it is commerce that suffers. It is you know government that suffers.

Nathaniel Nelson
Yeah, although it occurs to me when you say that that in the Microsoft case the attackers were going after information. It seems like what you’re talking about has more to do with reliability. Of these data centers now I have some vague understanding that there are plenty of data centers out there with huge amounts of competing resources where maybe even if one does go down the load can be transferred but to another or to 3 or 4 others. Is that not the case.

Andrew Ginter
I think generally it is and you know this is this is reaching sort of the borders of of my you know my knowledge here but I do understand that in some jurisdictions certainly the United States I think I think europe as well. Um. In some jurisdictions. you’re not allowed to move customer data out of the country or out of the jurisdiction in the case of the the european union and so that would tend to reduce. The the number of data centers that could serve as your backups for those critical functions. now again I don’t know which jurisdictions in the world have these rules I don’t I don’t track this but you know hypothetically if you had a smaller jurisdiction. They only had. 2 or 3 or 4 data centers in. Let’s say the country and one of them fails. You’ve lost 25% of your processing capacity. You don’t have as many options for some of those critical functions because of the law.

Nathaniel Nelson
Yeah, you know it occurs to me. right now I’m gonna start over it actually reminds me of a a conversation that I was having with some folks at ah, a major software company software as a service provider.

Nathaniel Nelson
We’re talking about Black Friday when everybody is on the internet all at once that whole weekend and it’s sort of like just there’s so much less, resource to go around so they have to solve this massive problem of How do we use the same amount of infrastructure to serve this many people and they were talking about especially because you know these senders can become overloaded and can cause one of them to go down what happens in the worst case scenario you don’t want everybody’s shopping websites to go down all at once and just the sheer. Magnitude of the logistical challenge involved was impressive and intimidating so I get the sense that there isn’t a ton of unused infrastructure available even in the cases where you don’t have those regulations in place.

Andrew Ginter
And that’s certainly true. You know when you know in Black Friday you know certain days or times of the of the day or times of the year where yeah, even if you have a lot of data centers around. There may not be that much spare capacity again. Critical. Information infrastructure is sort of the the message here. It has an impact on the business operating the infrastructure but it also has an impact on society so you know this is this is the new reality.

Nathaniel Nelson
I’m just glad that the Cloud is up right now because our podcasting software uses that for backup files. So thanks to everybody out there doing doing vlads work

Andrew Ginter
Yes, indeed.

Andrew Ginter
Okay, so so you know preventing outages reliability is King but you said you know we’re connecting these things to the internet you’ve got remote teams can we talk about the data what data is moving out to the to the it networks what data is moving out to the internet what are people looking at remotely what are people using remotely why? Why do any of this.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
That’s a great question and well in a nutshell I would say it’s it’s essentially remote management and ensuring that all the all the operator like ensuring that the facility is within normal operating parameters I’ll give an example. Ah, most of most of outages that happen within our industry are usually related to a power failure but that power failure can happen in many ways it can happen because of human error it can happen because a static transfer switch or an automatic transfer switch failed to. To switch from the utility to the backup generators at our own site. It can be loads of things. when and again we’re talking about mechanical and electrical systems mechanical systems will always be prone to failure. most most data centers right now are still being cold using air. that air obviously needs to be ah needs to be funneled through to the actual servers at a particular temperature and on the particular humidity level should the humidity level surpass the normal operating normal operating operating parameters. You can either get a short circuit on on the board or. Many other things small errors that you would not even be able to assign to I don’t know something like like an old operating system failure or anything like that if 1 thing 1 thing you will always find within a data center is an uninterruptable power supply.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
The power that comes from the grid. Ah for for a data center while good to have it. It’s it’s not reliable enough and it’s not clean enough in order to feed it directly to a server or a switch for example. So all data centers will connect their utility to the uninterruptable power supply the uninterruptable power supply is essentially a big set of batteries that turns the Ac current that comes in from the grid into Dc current that can be. Eaten up directly by ah by the servers and the switches therefore because as I said there is a skill also skills shortage within within the industry. you do not have enough people to place them across all your facilities to ensure real-time monitoring therefore. 1 of the data that passes through um as as as as you as you pointed it out most of it is going to be related to remote management and again depending on the flavor of data center that is going to be different a collocation data center is going to have totally different requirements to a hyperscale data center. In terms of what needs to be managed and what doesn’t need to be managed. So I would say like in a nutshell to sum up ah most of this data is facility operating parameters and as soon as something goes auri.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Someone is able to see it and act upon it before the actual load is lost.

Andrew Ginter
So I’m not sure I understand here. you know you you said you’re you’re looking at this stuff. The the goal is uptime. you’re looking at indicators of you know, potential problems especially with the power supply. Into the future how far into the future. Can you see I mean if there’s a lightning strike and and ah a transformer blows Out. We’re talking near Instantaneous. What what kind of visibility? Do you have into that.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Right? It’s not necessarily about utmost the utmost visibility on pretty much everything in in the in the example that you’ve described you might have you might have outside of the gray space. For example, you might have. data being pulled into from a weather station if you’re able to see that the storm is going to come and you know that the utility grid you’re connected to is not that reliable your switching mechanism your power switching gear. For example, will. Detect that there has been a loss of load on the utility and then it’s going to switch that over to the onsite backup generator which is usually diesel. Obviously there are other other other fuels and the industry is is exploring that massively right now. But yeah, um. Another example in here would be. You’re you’re interested in those status changes more more like um if you know that you’re running on the generator for the next 7 hours then you can think about do I have enough fuel to run that generator for 7 hours in order to not lose the load what happens if. That generator fails do I have another generator that I can switch switch the load to and so on and so forth when it comes to the cooling side of things. For example, you’re always interested to keep on to keep the operating parameters in terms of humidity temperature and stuff like that. Ah.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Within within quite close ranges in in the in the white space. if humidity drops because your humidifier essentially died and you weren’t notified. Ah you you like the the actual facility manager didn’t receive an honor of that hey. In data hole one. The humidifier is no longer firing. Um that overtime can lead essentially to static discharges that might actually fry the motherboard of a server and you don’t know like in a caucas. Ah, environment. For example, that server is owned by another company that essentially relies on you to keep it alive for them to be able to do business so I would say that’s that that’s kind of it. In the sense that you’re interested in those status changes. You’re interested to get as much data fed into as possible. both from the both from the infrastructure side of things. The server side the the whitespace side of things and as well as that everything else that you can, you can get your hands on as I said there are a lot of data centers that. Are directly directly tied into weather stations so that they are aware of pressure changes coming in the next two weeks wind speeds and so on and so forth. There are other data centers. For example, that might have onsite power generation like a wind turbine and they could technically.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Make a conscious decision knowing that hey we’re going to have wind speeds of I don’t know thirteen thirty kilometers per hour next week that essentially means that we can disconnect from the utility and run on ah wind power for x amount of time and we’re going to save x amount of um. X amount of dollars at the end of the day.

Andrew Ginter
Okay, so you know this has been interesting. Thank you for that. coming back to to industrial cybersecurity. you know to me sort of the the Cyber Threat. We worry about you know if if everything’s connected. Well then everything’s exposed. The bad guys can. In principle get in and you know turn off power flows you know interrupt the the operation of the of the the Data Center. so let’s let’s swing back to industrial cybersecurity. How how are we preventing that. What’s the yeah, you know you teach people how to do ot security for for data centers. What do you teach them.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
I mean essentially I’ve always always said this the answer to this is Education Education education um the the contractors that are going to work within the contractors or engineers that are going to work within within the gray space because they do not have this. Um. This it mindset sort to say or this cyber security mindset. They’re not even aware that that that that might be an issue. Ah so therefore it’s it’s classic stuff. Really It’s stuff like have you checked what the remote login for that particular piece of equipment that you just installed is. Have you changed the default remote login or you haven’t it’s still admin and 1 to 3 4 okay, if for example, you bring a new piece. A new generator in and you do not cover that particular attack attack vector what. You can just imagine someone is even like again and and threats can come in from both directions. They can come in from the inside from a disgruntled employee for example or they can come in from the outside. Um. when it comes to when it comes to as I said like my previous previous example, you just got got the new piece new new generator in but no one changed the um no one changed the default default remote access ah credentials someone could possibly go in put it in maintenance mode.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Then something happens to the utility this power switching mechanism tries to switch the utility ah tries to switch the energy from the utility from the utility grid to the onsite power generation and the generators in maintenance mode. So it’s not going to accept the load and you just lost the load.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
There’s ah end again. It’s like ostensibly ah these professionals are the ones working within within the operational operation operational technology side within the data center. They essentially just need to be aware that hey there’s a play thought off surface. Um.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Surface areas of attack. just knowing which ones are going to be immediately available to someone can essentially just just just make just make a total total world of difference. Another thing that we we we strongly strongly enforce him in in our series of eo when it comes to when it comes to cybersecurity is if something like this. if if you realize that hey this is this is a this is a surface area of attack that no one has thought thought through. Raise it up with your manager, go go hire ensure that it is put in a standard operating procedure when installing a new generator ensure that to come back to my previous example, the default um remote access credentials are changed and they’re changed to something that fits with. The Cyber security policy for example of or the password policy if you want um of of the business.

Andrew Ginter
So What strikes me here is that this all sounds very familiar. you know patching Passwords remote access Systems. You know don’t be silly. Don’t leave a default password on the remote access system. and. You know in a sense. Maybe it’s not surprising. It sounds a lot like what I see in other you know standards and regulations like NERC CIP. NERC CIP is you know North American Critical Infrastructure protection for the power grid. Ah, it’s all about ensuring reliability not of the data center but of the power grid. so yeah, very familiar focused on Reliability begs the question if this is critical industrial, not critical, industrial critical information infrastructure. are there regulations in the space are the regulations coming in the space and and this is what I asked Vlad next.

Andrew Ginter
And can we can we talk about regulations I mean other industries the tsa just came down with you know, new rules for for petrochemical pipelines Nine weeks after the colonial incident similar rules just came out from the tsa for rail systems. you know, passenger rail systems um there’s you know been regulations for the power grid in North America forever ah there’s nistu now over in Europe you know is any of this affecting data centers are there are there are there cybersecurity regulations for data centers.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
They definitely are I’ll say I will say that I mean 1 of our cyber our old cyber security track ah came was born of a need in. Ah, for example in in the Us. if you’re part of the state of New York since 2018 if you have a facility that houses any sort of financial information. The engineers working within that facility are required to demonstrate cyber security training and refreshers every six months. That’s just 1 example when it comes to when it comes to regulations in general um regulations have got ah have gotten kind of like how sha buh this have gone have kicked into gears specifically after the covid pandemic um during the pandemic data center technicians were essentially classified as essential workers and that was kind of the very first time when data centers came to the fore in in the public public mind. they were they were the things that essentially allowed us to continue working working in the conditions like from home and working remotely and keeping in touch with people when we couldn’t physically do that therefore after every after thus settled um a lot of people started realizing? Oh my god.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
These facilities use a lot of power um without everyone actually thinking I also use a lot of digital services So regulations are now regulations are now coming to the fore in the sense that trying to essentially.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
From the design stage enforce a sustainable and energy efficient design for legacy data centers. They will be required soon within the European Union. For example, they will be required to share and make. Public The the power usage efficiency of a one of the ah several several metrics actually one of which is power usage efficiency which essentially calculates how much power you need to run the facility versus how much power you need to run just the I T load. The closer. You are to 1 of a Pu E the more efficient you are obviously that doesn’t apply to every single type of Data center because if you are to implement liquid cooling in your data center your Pe is going to go up there but you’re still going to use less resources. So There’s this like. The regulation the regulation landscape in a wake I I feel like Regulators are still trying to map their way through um through the industry but when it comes to cybersec Security Cyber Security regulation Beyond everything that’s already out there when it comes I don’t know to like. Payment processing systems Pc idss and so on and so forth for data centers. There’s all that and then there’s another level and the level that will that level will be dictated by the type of data that you house and store as I started.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
when I when I asked them this question in New York for example they life simple this is gonna be the law going forward. We need people to be aware that cyber security is something that needs to be of paramount importance front and center into every professional’s mind. Regardless if they work in a mission critical capacity or not now. As time went on other states in the us have also essentially just copied this particular law and we’re seeing it. We’re seeing it spread out as well.

Andrew Ginter
So The regulations are are changing. but you know data Centers. You know, unlike many other kinds of of sort of very conservative industrial processes. Data centers are way out on the bleeding edge of. Almost everything. what else is happening in the Data Center space. What what new is coming down the pipe here.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
That’s that that again of a very good question and if we go back to to my to my to my introduction is it this. What’s happening is the reason that I’m not going to change industries anytime soon. Because right now we as as as I mentioned previously with the advent of Ai. we need to. We need to find more smarter ways of ah smarter ways of building data centers and more efficient and sustainable ways of building data centers. 1 of the main gripes everyone has with the data center facility is the amount of power they use. Um that is not to say that they are. There aren’t data centers out there. For example that are completely independent of the grid or even better using renewable renewable. Ah, renewable power sources created their own microgroup microgrid that feeds back surplus energy into the grid. We right now we’ve got we’ve got people testing the idea of having small nuclear reactors on site to completely. Um. Disconnect from the utility and not not even rely on the utility per se um we were seeing. We’re seeing more innovative ways of um of handling your cooling system for example, oil and gas oil and gas is a massive massive use user of.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
Supercomputing and when we’re talking about super computerers. We currently the way we the way we approach supercomp computerers is hey we just put a bunch of computers together and ask them to do the same thing now for better or for worse that is a data center. when it comes to um. Highly intensive processing tasks such as the determining determining the depth and the type of material and the design of an oil. Well for example or where on particular oil oil. Lake or oil field is when it comes to when it comes to going deep underground. These are highly highly intensive tasks and because they are highly intensive tasks. They will require graphical processing units because they require graphical processing units the temperatures that you need to work with go. Go through the roof because a gpu is essentially geared to all to work in normal operating conditions of around ° when you get when you have thousands of these. It becomes a problem. Um air can only can only work. Up to I would say um around 20 kilos per rack if that but then if we look at liquid or dielectric fluids. They can handle much more.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
So what happened what happened with because within dcd we also have within within the center dynamics. We also have an award series where pretty much everyone from from the industry submits submits their latest and greatest designs and one that really caught my eye was a single phase. Immerstion cooling data center which was built in Texas but it was built by ah by an australian company. Essentially what they did. They took your classic rack that hosts. Um your servers and switches put it on the side and effectively created an immersion top. They filled that immersion tub with dielectric fluid in a closed loop system that diaelectric and and then the servers and well because they they only did it for the servers. The servers were dunked horizontally ah, vertically sorry, not horizontally they go horizontally in a normal rack. Servers were tonked vertically. With absolutely nothing on them. So all the the casing was out the fans were out and the processor was in direct contact with the diaelectric fluid being in direct contact with the direct dielectric fluid. It was able to call it at the much with with much greater efficiencies using way. Way less ah energy in order to achieve those efficiencies. So that’s the thing. It’s like we are in a moment of I would say extreme innovation simply because every single data center professional looks ahead and realizes that.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
This is not going to change anytime soon. Simply like our need of as a society of digital services is only going to increase therefore we’re only going to need more data centers. We just need to get smarter at building them in a more efficient and sustainable way. So I’d say that’s. The the main thing going forward with with data centers. Everyone is looking for a paradigm shift in how to build and operate in the most efficient and sustainable way possible.

Andrew Ginter
So you know earlier in the in the episode Vlad was you know I asked him about safety and reliability and and he you know focused in on reliability right? away as sort of the the big priority here. But when we’re talking about. Nuclear generators on site. You know I have to wonder if if you know safety isn’t going to isn’t going to come back into the equation in a big way in the future. you know I worked in not a data center I mean I worked in a the University Data Center full of supercomputers this was thirty years ago back then ah there were safety concerns in the data center I mean obviously when you have large amounts of power. You’ve just got to be careful with what you touch that you you don’t get fried. That’s a safety concern. but you know in some of these data centers and I don’t know if this is still the case but back in the day. Ah, some of the data centers did not have oxygen atmospheres if you were in there when the fire suppressive atmosphere was pumped into it. You’d you’d asphyxiate you had you know you had to have safety training just to set foot in these wretched places because. You know most of the time they were filled with ah an atmosphere that had no oxygen so no fires could start so you didn’t want to be in there when when the oxygen or when the when the atmosphere changed. so you know again, what? what struck me about about the automation and the the cyber security concerns here you know is that.

Andrew Ginter
They seem very familiar and it sounds like in the future might even become you know, even more familiar as as ah, these designs you know, move more towards a ah space where there are additional safety concerns on top of. The the you know the the top of mind reliability concerns that that all critical infrastructures have.

Andrew Ginter
Well, that’s quite the vision for the future of Data centers. It’s It’s obviously a field that’s evolving very quickly. but you know coming back to Cyber security on on the security issue for data centers. What What are the main takeaways. What? what? What should we? What should we be thinking about. For the the industrial side of the Data center.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
yeah I mean it’s the way the way that I see it. it’s it’s quite quite simple as it’s part of um as data centers are part of of the mission critical. It’s it’s a mission critical industry downtime can downtime needs to be avoided at all costs. so I would say first and foremost is the old adage that we like in this industry is Education Education Education make your professionals make your engineers aware of the fact that this is is even a possibility most of them are not going to be aware. You will protect your id it equipment or your yspace you will protect it from cybersecurity point of view in as as best as you can simply because you’re going to have the people that are able to understand this landscape whereas in the gray space you the the professionals working in there have a totally different background. And therefore are not even aware of that this this this is a possibility so I would say yeah just Education Education education always always ensure that they know this is a possibility they understand the repercussions of this and as well as that. Know what to report if something goes already if something looks odd, they know how to report it up and as I said previously ensure that if an event happens or if something if a particular if a particular cyber security incident has taken place.

Vlad Gabriel Anghel
That the steps to avoid that are embedded into the standard operating procedure of um of that particular facility. And yeah I mean if you’re more curious about the world of data centers just visit our website Data Center at our dot com. that’s where you’re gonna find in-dep features on pretty much every every every subject the subject matter within the industry. That’s where you’re gonna find video interviews. That’s where you’re gonna find the training division which I’m responsible for um and yeah. The world of data centers is a wonderful thing and I wish more people would be aware of it.

Nathaniel Nelson
Andrew clearly education is important in this space. But I’m wondering if there are any other takeaways that you got from this episode.

Andrew Ginter
Yeah, well you know the thing that struck me is that a lot of these systems. A lot of the the concerns about cybersecurity. They’re very familiar to anybody you know involved in any other kind of of industrial cybersec security operation.

In particular with the you know the fact that this is is ah critical industrial or sorry of the critical informational infrastructure and you know there’s such a focus on Reliability I’m I’m reminded of the the Nersip standards. which are also very focused on Reliability. You know some of the measures he talked about. You know teaching people about seemed seemed familiar. There. and unlike you know the the power industry where you know power uses is is increasing a couple of percent per year worldwide. It’s sort of it’s a mature industry unlike that the data center industry strikes me as still in its Infancy. Um. I mean for I don’t know what what is it now 50 years. We’ve been everything has had more and more computers in it. Data centers have sprung up with more and more computers in them more and more data centers. This is a growth Industry. We’re going to continue automating Business. We’re going to continue automating everything. There’s always going to be more computers. There’s always going to be more data centers is what it sounds like and the field needs expertise and experienced Professionals. So yes, we need Education. I’m wondering if there isn’t an opportunity here for industrial cybersecurity people from other industries. For example, the power industry the power sector where it’s you know a mature industry I Wonder if there’s an an opportunity for some of these professionals to switch fields and to make an impact in a growth industry.

Nathaniel Nelson
Well thanks to Vlad Gabrie Anghel for speaking with you Andrew and Andrew is always thank you for speaking with me this has been the industrial security podcast from waterfall. Thanks to everyone out there listening.

Andrew Ginter
It’s always a pleasure. Thank you Nate.