Federal datacenter security improvements sought by new bill

The Register reports that federal data centers would be subjected to more stringent security requirements aimed at bolstering such systems' defense against cybersecurity and physical threats under legislation introduced by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., and Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., and John Cornyn, R-Texas. "With the increasing threat of cyberattacks and natural disasters, we must ensure the integrity of our nation's critical information by protecting data centers like Switch in Las Vegas," said Rosen. However, specific security requirements needed for federal data centers have not been detailed, with the legislation only tasking the General Services Administration to develop the necessary requirements along with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Cyber Director. Meanwhile, the senators noted that the new bill would expand on the optimizations brought on by the Federal Data Center Optimization Initiative that would expire by the end of the year. More than 6,000 data centers have been consolidated by the effort, resulting in $5.8 billion in savings, according to the senators.