Claroty's research on 750,000 cyber-physical systems across global data centers reveals that nearly one in five assets a

Claroty, the cyber-physical systems protection company, announced new research on security exposures in foundational data center assets. The report from Claroty's Team82, titled "State of CPS Security: Data Center Exposures," analyzed more than 750,000 CPS assets across the world's biggest data center facilities and found nearly one in five assets are "one hop" away from systems making outbound connections that could provide attackers a pathway to exposed data center assets.

Data centers contain a wide range of CPS assets including building management systems, building automation systems, power distribution, monitoring and control systems, uninterruptible power supplies, generators, cooling infrastructure, environmental monitoring platforms, and data center infrastructure management solutions. All of these support uptime and reliability requirements, service efficiency, and physical safety. The research uncovered prevalent exposures across each of these areas.

Amir Preminger, CTO and head of Team82 at Claroty, stated that data centers have evolved into critical infrastructure globally and threat actors see high value in disrupting their operations. He emphasized that as data center protection is vitally important on a societal scale in terms of the AI boom and economic and national security, building operational resilience is the best path forward for operators safeguarding these complex CPS ecosystems.

To protect uptime and achieve operational resilience that meets compliance standards, data center operators should adopt a robust CPS protection strategy. By operationalizing core security pillars through a unified CPS protection program, data center operators can eliminate critical blind spots, contain lateral movement, and ensure uninterrupted continuity of the digital infrastructure that powers modern life.

The "State of CPS Security: Data Center Exposures" report analyzed 750,000 or more CPS assets across the world's biggest data center facilities, including building and power management systems and infrastructure assets responsible for cooling, physical security, and fire protection systems. The research was conducted by Team82 and Claroty's data scientists.