Data centers are mushrooming across the globe. Amid this boom, operators are also investing heavily in security to protect data center equipment and assets.
Data centers are mushrooming across the globe. Amid this boom, operators are also investing heavily in security to protect data center equipment and assets. This article looks at how data centers have emerged as a key driver for the physical security market.
All over the world, the expansion of data centers is taking place at unprecedented speed. This is partially driven by users’ unsatiable appetite for AI, which requires tremendous computing power to process and run. The emergence of generative AI, particularly, has further accelerated investment in data center infrastructure, for example graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI accelerators.
Moreover, AI is also driving demand for data storage as organizations must collect, store, and manage massive volumes of structured and unstructured data to train and improve AI models. In addition, inference, or the process of running trained AI models in real time, further creates ongoing demand for computing resources. Unlike training, which occurs periodically, inference supports millions of daily user interactions and requires continuous infrastructure availability.
Cloud computing remains another major growth driver. Businesses are increasingly shifting applications, databases, and workloads from on-premises systems to cloud platforms operated by companies such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google. The expansion of digital services is also fueling growth. Streaming platforms, social media, e-commerce, online gaming, and collaboration tools generate vast amounts of data that must be processed, stored, and delivered with minimal latency. All these factors combine to accelerate the construction of ever more advanced data centers all over the world.
Physical security ‘growing fast’ in data center sector
Needless to say, data centers need to be well protected against intruders and hostile actors, both internal and external. The rise of data centers, then, has naturally led to a proportional increase in demand for physical security solutions.
“Physical security is growing fast in the data center sector, often outpacing investment in other industries. Increasing demand of AI referencing applications like ChatGPT and Deepseek are driving this surge, as they need massive data center infrastructure to handle their processing demands,” said Tommy Zhu, Principal Analyst for Physical Security at Omdia.
In terms of video surveillance, a key sub-sector in physical security, the Asia and Oceania region is showing particularly strong growth for data center spending. “According to Omdia, the video surveillance market for data center is expected to expand at 11.3 percent per year between 2024 and 2029. That's notably higher than the region's overall market growth rate of 8.9 percent during the same period,” Zhu said. “Much of this expansion is being fueled by new ‘sovereign AI’ projects and the need for large-scale infrastructure to support them.”
Sovereign AI projects are those that strengthen a country's ability to develop, deploy, and govern AI using infrastructure, data, models, and policies that remain under its own legal and strategic control. India, for example, is home to IndiaAI Mission, a massive national framework to build indigenous compute infrastructure and create a centralized national dataset platform. Singapore’s SEA-LION, a regional open-source LLM designed to capture the unique nuances, cultures, and languages of the ASEAN region, is another notable example.
Zhu further cites the role of compliance in data center security. Many data centers must comply with standards such as ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA and GDPR-related controls. These frameworks often require controlled physical access, audit trails and video retention. As regulations tighten, spending on physical security technologies increases.
“Standards and regulations are becoming critical trust mechanisms in data center security, with standards like ISO 27001 and SOC 2 establishing explicit benchmarks for access control, monitoring, and incident response protocols,” Zhu said.
Solutions needed to address data center threats
Indeed, data centers have emerged as a key growth driver for physical security, which is needed to address various types of threats facing data center facilities.
A major threat cited by Zhu is intentional damage of infrastructure. Data centers house critical and expensive equipment including servers, networking solutions, critical cloud and AI infrastructure as well as power and cooling systems. Damage to these pieces of equipment can cause thermal runaway or immediate outages. To address these threats, Zhu said, security is critical, for example implementation of multi-layered perimeter defense including thermal imaging and radar to detect intruders long before they reach critical external infrastructure.
Unauthorized physical access to servers to steal information or install malicious software/code is another threat and can lead to service disruptions, severe regulatory fines and reputational ruin. “Access control systems address these by enforcing ‘least privilege’ access through multi-factor authentication (MFA) combining biometrics and mobile credentials – at every internal zone,” Zhu said.
Finally, trusted personnel such as contractors, technicians and cleaners have legitimate access but can still introduce vulnerabilities through malicious or accidental operations, causing operation disruption of datacenter. “Video surveillance system can use behavioral analytics to identify abnormal behavior such as technician entering an internal zone outside of their scheduled ticket window or lingering in a sensitive aisle,” Zhu said.
Increasingly, the diverse range of physical security solutions deployed in data centers is unified on a single platform to make life easier for operators.
“Unified platforms provide operators with real-time data center intelligence, enabling rapid incident response and reducing detection/response times. Centralized architectures facilitate single-point policy configuration and deployment, ensuring consistent enforcement across distributed infrastructure while eliminating configuration drift, reducing administrative overhead, and maintaining alignment with evolving threat landscapes and regulatory requirements,” Zhu said.
Zhu also cites the trend of AI, which is increasingly adopted in data centers to improve accuracy and operational efficiency. “AI analytics can spot unusual behavior and potential threats by analyzing both historical patterns and real-time data. Video surveillance systems can pick up on suspicious activities, like someone loitering without authorization or attempting to access server cabinets, and send immediate alerts when something looks off,” Zhu said.
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