South African democracy must be defended through resilient data infrastructure located firmly on home soil.
That’s the word from Adriaan Venter, CEO of Cube ICT Solutions, a leading managed ICT services provider.
“The current global trend towards hybrid warfare using cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns and economic pressure is less effective when there is sovereign control over critical information infrastructure like data centres,” Venter explains.
Data hosted abroad is subject to the laws and politics of the host country.
A number of European Central Banks have recently started moving their gold deposits closer to home in the face of increasing geopolitical risk. Against this background, concerns over data centres consuming large amounts of water and electricity must be balanced against emerging threats to the very existence of the world’s democracies.
“A vibrant domestic data centre sector means overseas actors can never legally compel cloud providers to hand over South African information assets or force them to cut off our data access entirely during some future geopolitical crisis,” explains Venter.
Aside from assuring sovereign data control, data centres defend democracy by fighting the fake news and disinformation that risks the gains made in South Africa over the past three decades.
Voter manipulation by hybrid digital means is not a phenomenon confined to other countries. Data centres can help provide the computing power needed for AI algorithms to scan the internet in pursuit of deepfakes, bot networks and coordinated disinformation campaigns.
Venter provides the following top five ways data centres defend democracy:
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Data centres act as digital fortresses shielding critical election infrastructure like voter registration rolls and election results.
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Democracies like SA’s are frequent targets for government-sponsored cyberattacks by the world’s rogue states. Modern data centres deploy massive digital defense systems to protect us all.
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Data centres keep the free press publishing when authoritarian regimes try to censor information or take down news sites. It is difficult to silence the media when data centres can distribute content across global networks.
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Data centres help secure our privacy by providing confidential computing and end-to-end encryption hosting. This protects activists, whistleblowers and everyday citizens.
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Data centres in multiple locations ensure government continuity by constantly backing up and duplicating essential civil records.
“Dispersed, cloud-based data centres located here are perhaps most valuable when it comes to preventing bad actors from physically tampering with the computers that keep our country, our democracy and our elections running smoothly,” concluded Venter.
