Financial Data Center, Hiding in Plain Sight

It's hard to keep a secret nowadays, and enormous data center projects are hard to hide. That's a dilemma for financial data centers housing some of the nation's most sensitive data. This week the Record published a story about the New York Stock Exchange's plans for a 398,000 square foot data center in northern New Jersey.

When the newspaper began calling about the data center, NYSE Euronext, site owner and builder Russo Development and contractor Structure Tone all declined comment. But the paper uncovered references to the identity of the data center's operator in SEC filings and local planning documents.

The paper notes that "public officials don't mind talking about the project in interviews," including the local mayor, police chief and an official from the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security. Oddly enough, questions about the security of the data center seem to have elicited comment from these officials. Planning documents also revealed a debate about whether the facility would need to have an emergency power off (EPO) button (it won't, as the design no longer includes wiring below the raised floor).

NYSE Euronext disclosed in an SEC filing that it is "consolidating our data centers in the United States and Europe, and have commenced construction of two of the new global data centers, which we expect to complete by the end of 2010."