DATA-CENTRE reliance on distributed cloud services is being tested as the Middle East conflict unfolds, with researchers warning that cloud resilience must move beyond “availability” to account for kinetic risks.
On 28 February, Iran’s Internet traffic reportedly fell to less than 1% across major networks, according to Cloudflare Radar, before Iran retaliated by hitting facilities in the UAE and Bahrain, including two Amazon Web Services sites in the UAE and a third facility in Bahrain that suffered physical impacts to its infrastructure, AWS stated on its Health Dashboard on 2 March.
Industry voices warn that such strikes demonstrate cloud infrastructure as a military target, with private infrastructure now running government and defence operations and making data centres “Tier 1 strategic targets,” per threat intelligence firms. Cyberattacks remain frequent, with threats ranging from traditional disk-wipers to real-time disruption that could cause a complete digital blackout if a cloud region is affected.
Analysts also flag that organisations often overemphasise high availability, neglectting recovery and governance, and should reassess disaster recovery plans and data sovereignty implications as workloads requiring real-time processing grow.