Is data centre understaffing a global cybersecurity crisis?

The stakes for getting data centre recruitment right are sky-high. 

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The data centre industry is a major modern success story. It’s the backbone of the digital economy and the cornerstone of economic growth:

• Data centre services drive some 5.55 trillion USD of benefit to the global economy each year and growing constantly. That’s almost 6% of global GDP. 

• By 2027, predictions say the sector will directly employ nearly 700,000 people, with tens of millions of jobs enabled downstream. 

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But it’s not all sunshine and roses. As the data centre industry (and our dependence on it) continues its stratospheric growth, risk is also snowballing. 

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It’s the perfect storm.

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As data centres become increasingly valuable assets, they become bigger targets – and the costs of breaches and downtime are amplified. 

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But at the same time, industry growth and competition for talent is fuelling staffing issues, leaving data centres increasing under-resourced to protect against and recover from breaches. 

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Threats and breaches up; defences and resilience down. It’s an impending cybersecurity crisis that’s growing proportionally to our reliance on data centres. And understaffing is the heart of it.

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The expansion paradox: infrastructure vs. people

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McKinsey says global data centre capacity could more than triple by 2023, as AI and cloud computing demands snowball. This skyrocketing demand has fuelled innovation in data centre design and construction processes, accelerating speed-to-market massively.

• Historically data centre construction was extremely labour intensive on-site, taking somewhere between 18-months and three years. 

• Today, growing emphasis on modular construction processes allows many construction companies to build data centres within 12-16 weeks.

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New data centre builds are being completed in record time, more consistently, and for less money. 

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Yes, there are still concerns – physical space constraints; regulatory hurdles; supply chain disruptions; energy infrastructure needs, and so on. But ultimately, the build isn’t the bottleneck.

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As data centre capacity expands though so does the need for the skilled specialists to operate them – and that’s a real problem. 

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For example, Uptime Institute find 58% of data centre operators are struggling to source candidates to fill open positions.

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Growing demand coupled with a too-small talent pool is driving stratospheric competition for people, especially across critical roles like security engineers, operations managers, and data centre technicians.

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As a result, data centres are being built faster than they can be properly staffed – and that catapults risk far beyond comfort zones.  

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The risks of data centre understaffing

Data centres – and the data they hold – are some of countries’ most valuable assets, playing a critical role in supporting national infrastructure and business. That makes them a prime threat for cyber-attacks. 

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As the UK’s National Protective Security Authority comments:

“The opportunities for attack are diverse. Threat actors will target vulnerabilities in data centres' ownership, geography, physical perimeter, data halls, Meet Me Rooms (MMRs), supply chains, staff, and cyber security in a concerted effort to breach data centres' defences or tamper with sensitive information or disrupt critical services.”

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Cybersecurity breaches can be extremely costly, with consequences for data owners, centre operators, and entire economies. Regulatory fines. Loss of IP. Downtime. Recovery and improvement costs. Reputational damage. 

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Looking globally, the average cost of a single data breach has reached a new peak of £3.68 million. 

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Defending against breaches and attacks is multi-faceted and complex, of course. But one strand that runs through everything else is people. 

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In 2023 55% of all data centre security incidents were insider threats. That is, an activity from an employees that causes harm or loss to the organisation, either unintentionally or intentionally.

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And Uptime Intelligence’s research shows that about 4 in 10 operators have had a major outage in the past three years in which human error played a role. 

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Understaffing makes breaches more likely, more serious, longer-lasting, and harder to recover from:

• Understaffing increases the workloads on your current staff, which in turn increases the risk of cut corners, errors, and unintentional breaches.

• Understaffing increases pressure on current staff, which could impact employee engagement – making intentional breaches more likely. 

• Understaffing means routine maintenance is more likely deferred, leading to equipment degradation, increased failure rates and decreased reliability. 

• Cybersecurity understaffing means organisations struggle to drive the behavioural change needed for a true cybersecurity culture, increasing risk.

• Understaffed teams lack the resources to monitor internal activity effectively, decreasing the effectiveness of early warning systems

• Understaffed teams struggle to respond to crises effectively, exacerbating damage. (Microsoft’s 2023 Sydney outage is a good example)

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A not-insignificant set of risks – so how can data centre recruiters address them? 

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How can data centres resolve hiring bottlenecks?

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We’ve touched above on the macro hiring environment that’s making recruitment difficult. None of this is new information for data centre operators, 54% of whom cite staffing as their leading management and operational challenge. 

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There’s little recruiters can do about global skills shortages. Finding qualified specialists, especially in often-remote data centre locations, is tough. Full stop. 

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Data centre operators are spending more than ever to attract and retain staff and actively poaching from competitors, but still struggling to overcome shortages.

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But this doesn’t mean there’s nothing recruiters can do. 

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One tactic is employer branding. A strong employer brand is a powerful weapon to attract, engage and retain talent, enabling data centre operators to compete more effectively for talent.

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Employer branding is absolutely a worthwhile investment of time. But it’s also a longer-term strategy, which recruiters likely find there’s limited appetite for in the need-it-yesterday timeline of data centre growth.

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A quicker-win approach involves looking at your internal hiring processes. Talent shortages are only one of the reasons data centre organisations struggle to hire. 

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The other is a leaky internal recruitment funnel. Especially when you’re hiring across multiple global locations, juggling different processes, technology, and regulations. 

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Look at your stats. Are you keeping everyone you want to hire?

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Ultimately, there’s no point pouring water into a leaky bucket. And many organisations’ bucket is leaking, because their internal processes are slow, chaotic, and bureaucratic.

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Nowhere is that truer than compliance. Traditional background screening processes often take weeks and months, snarled up by the complexity of global hiring and legacy approaches.

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So either you’re losing candidates because you’re too slow to process checks. Practically criminal, in today’s hiring market. Or you’re keeping candidates you shouldn’t be, which superficially tackles understaffing issues but ultimately increases risk in just the same ways. 

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But speed and security don’t need to be trade-offs.

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A quick win: better, faster data centre compliance

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We often talk to recruiters who are resigned to the way background screening happens because they’re not clear there’s another way. Background checks and compliance have always happened like this:

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• Yes, it’s laborious, manual, and slow.
• Yes, the candidate experience is awful. 
• Yes, providers are a black box with no visibility. 
• Yes, you’re reliant on a jumble of local providers.
• Yes, you’re never quite confident you’re doing it right.

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But that’s just the way it is, right? It doesn’t need to be. In recent years, there’s been lots of innovation around background checks processes. 

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Veremark has become one of the world’s leading background check providers, thanks to our:

• Global coverage. We conduct checks in over 180 countries, with regional teams across the globe providing local expertise and timely support. 

• Modern technology. We leverage tech like blockchain in smart ways to make pre-hire checks fast, trustworthy, and transparent, with real-time dashboards.

• Excellent service. We prioritise a great customer experience, to help your hiring team move faster, without frustrations and delays. 

• Record and pedigree. We’ve conducted more than 300,000 checks over the past year, saving recruitment teams more than 1,500,000 hours. 

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Accelerating and improving background checks aren’t a silver bullet for data centre recruitment. There are some pretty profound issues impacting the sector that are likely to make recruiters’ lives difficult for a while yet.

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But it is an area that’s quick to solve and drives a measurable impact, fast. And as data centre growth continues to snowball, operators that invest in faster, smarter hiring processes now will dominate the next decade of expansion.

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Check out our ROI calculator for a back-of-napkin idea whether it’s worth a chat with our team.  

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_{Veremark is one of the world's leading background screening and pre-hire check providers, with a mission to help the world trust faster. Contact us here.}

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