8 ms·

Swiss Fort Knox - High secure data center inside the Swiss Alps

47 points by FredericJ 13y ago

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago
NSA now deciding where they can place a splitter...
- jonlucc 13y ago
  I'm guessing they're already on the client list.
atonse 13y ago
I love that so many of my favorite James Bond fantasies are coming to life nowadays, with a modern, internet twist! Where's the room where you can sit and stroke the cat on your lap?
- walshemj 13y ago
  I realy realy want the facilities staff to have color coordinated jumpsuit uniforms and hard hats. Red for security guards of course :-) Do you think equipping them with Mp40's would be going to far.
jonlucc 13y ago
Is physical security that big of a problem to solve? I think the more pressing issue would be attacks through their nice data connection.
- FredericJ 13y ago
  As long as cold boot attacks are an issue, physical security is a big win. But promising research might make it a thing of the past. http://privatecore.com/vcage/ http://privatecore.com/vcage/
appplemac 13y ago
Looks like a really nice place for a bank vault, yes. But does physical security matter that much for the IT sector? If so, these ridiculous security measures are worth nothing if not accompanied by very, very heavy digital security solutions. P.S. Why didn't they start a bank in there? Is banking too mainstream already?
- Xylakant 13y ago
  Does physical security of bank vaults still matter that much nowadays? Most of your money is stored in bits and that applies to the super-wealthy at least as much as for the mere mortals. It's certainly still important, but the "we'll steal tons of gold and valuable papers" is probably getting old.
- mkuhn 13y ago
  There is quite a few "datacenters" in bunkers in the Swiss alps and I guess in other places. Physical security does matter in many cases such as when a bank is storing tapes in a secure location without them being connected. Often the servers are only storing a small amount of the information that is stored in the whole installation.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Physical security seems insignificant these days when all it takes is a government order to access any data they please.
roel_v 13y ago
During the previous .com craze (2000-ish), I was at a Mercedes data center around Munich that was build in a former WWII bunker. The allies, when they captured it, decided against blowing it up because (according to our guide at the time), blowing it up would take so much explosives that it would leave a several-kilometer large crater and destroy all glass windows for 10's of kilometers around. They had some pictures of how (during the conversion to data center) they used wire saws ten of meters long to saw through the 5 meters of concrete thick walls. Pretty impressive. That said, it seemed like the thick walls were more of a sales gimmick than actually being useful. Whether a wall is 10 or 5000 cm of concrete, no burglar will get through; and when there really is a nuclear war going on, the safety of the servers of the majority of companies in there wouldn't matter a bit.
- tombrossman 13y ago
  We've got loads of German bunkers here in Jersey and I often think of what else they could be used for. Our neighbour has converted one to a totally soundproof media room, for example. The larger ones are of historic value and are being restored, but there are some good reasons to use the medium-sized ones for server rooms. The temperature is naturally very cool inside, and they all have superb ventilation due to the air filters installed in case of chemical attack (Hitler was gassed in WW1 and so obsessed with gas locks & ventilation). Physical security, that's obvious. Even those that were partially destroyed after the war were made safe by pouring more concrete to re-seal them. A highly-interconnected island with Gigabit broadband and multiple links to the UK & France. Hey, if anyone is interested in building 'Data Bunkers' this is a damn good place to start. The local government is pretty business friendly, too.
  - raverbashing 13y ago
    Jersey => Channel Island, correct?
    - tombrossman 13y ago
      Yes, we are right off the French coast. Here's some background on the WW2 history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Channel_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Channel_Isla...
michaelgrafl 13y ago
The client I work for has his servers in this thing, and I'll probably get to visit it soon. I'd rather they had a whisky bar and a place to smoke cigars installed somewhere in there. Still, looking forward to seeing it for myself.
prayerslayer 13y ago
One of my professors told us that UBS mirrors its whole data center to another one located in a mountain. Does anybody know if it's this particular thing? Or are there more than one of this?
- chrisboesing 13y ago
  From the Wired[0] article posted above[1]: "Oschwald[Co-Founder of Swiss Fort Knox] can tick off blue-chip companies such as Cisco Systems, Novartis, UBS and Deutsche Bank among his clients." [0]: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-thousand-terabytes-under-the-ground http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612298
Luc 13y ago
It seems strange to me that they piggybacked on the Fort Knox 'brand'. Now if something untoward happens at Fort Knox, their brand is impacted too. Seems like a missed opportunity to make the most of the aura of quality that 'Swiss' has (I like 'Swiss Fort' better).
- oh_sigh 13y ago
  What is going to happen to Fort Knox? Is a madman going to blow up a nuclear bomb inside of it, irradiating the gold for thousands of years?
  - Luc 13y ago
    Ok, you're right, it's far fetched. Fort Knox is a huge place though. I was thinking along the lines of a guy going on a shooting spree or something. The Fort Knox child massacre, that kind of thing. Very very unlikely I guess. Or someone starts up a Fort Knox site on Tor, and in the end lots of people get scammed. It just seems incongruous to me to have a bunker in the Swiss Alps, more or less the pinnacle of safety, and then call it after something on the other side of the world.
duiker101 13y ago
"Sabotage proof, high-performance cooling system" "Uninterruptible power supply" Yhea....
conductr 13y ago
Good marketing gimmick for security....the things enterprise solutions are made of
neals 13y ago
Man, I love the style of this image. Anybody know a collection of these kind of images?
dexcs 13y ago
A more detailed article about it: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-thousand-terabytes-under-the-ground http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-...
bostonpete 13y ago
Looks like something out of Cryptonomicon.
Theodores 13y ago
This looks to me like bin Laden's Mountain Fortress, the one Donald Rumsfeld told us about: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/05/bin_ladens_fict.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/05/bin...
pasbesoin 13y ago
So, if I may ask, for the small time host, where and with whom do people consider things to be... "reasonably" secure? I'm less concerned about catastrophic physical destruction than I am about e.g. the Swiss equivalent of a national security letter / remit /warrant / whatever. Physical security is nice with respect to securing the physical hardware from unwanted access. I used to manage a site that did nothing nefarious, but that did accumulate some rather personal discussions. As I've considered whether to do so again, I've wondered where the hey I would / should host it, these days. We always policed fairly strongly, including to e.g. removing copy/pastes of full news articles. The place was never about "law breaking". But I don't want to facilitate Agency X, BigCo Y, or SocialScum Z in their efforts to flesh out personal profiles from the server end, nor to throttle "reasonable" conversation. I suppose the answer is "nowhere", these days. But maybe there is still a relatively "next best thing".

47 points by FredericJ 13y ago

JimmaDaRustla 13y ago

NSA now deciding where they can place a splitter...

jonlucc 13y ago
I'm guessing they're already on the client list.

atonse 13y ago

I love that so many of my favorite James Bond fantasies are coming to life nowadays, with a modern, internet twist! Where's the room where you can sit and stroke the cat on your lap?

walshemj 13y ago
I realy realy want the facilities staff to have color coordinated jumpsuit uniforms and hard hats. Red for security guards of course :-) Do you think equipping them with Mp40's would be going to far.

jonlucc 13y ago

Is physical security that big of a problem to solve? I think the more pressing issue would be attacks through their nice data connection.

FredericJ 13y ago
As long as cold boot attacks are an issue, physical security is a big win. But promising research might make it a thing of the past. http://privatecore.com/vcage/ http://privatecore.com/vcage/

appplemac 13y ago

Looks like a really nice place for a bank vault, yes. But does physical security matter that much for the IT sector? If so, these ridiculous security measures are worth nothing if not accompanied by very, very heavy digital security solutions. P.S. Why didn't they start a bank in there? Is banking too mainstream already?

Xylakant 13y ago
Does physical security of bank vaults still matter that much nowadays? Most of your money is stored in bits and that applies to the super-wealthy at least as much as for the mere mortals. It's certainly still important, but the "we'll steal tons of gold and valuable papers" is probably getting old.
mkuhn 13y ago
There is quite a few "datacenters" in bunkers in the Swiss alps and I guess in other places. Physical security does matter in many cases such as when a bank is storing tapes in a secure location without them being connected. Often the servers are only storing a small amount of the information that is stored in the whole installation.
tlrobinson 13y ago
Physical security seems insignificant these days when all it takes is a government order to access any data they please.

roel_v 13y ago

During the previous .com craze (2000-ish), I was at a Mercedes data center around Munich that was build in a former WWII bunker. The allies, when they captured it, decided against blowing it up because (according to our guide at the time), blowing it up would take so much explosives that it would leave a several-kilometer large crater and destroy all glass windows for 10's of kilometers around. They had some pictures of how (during the conversion to data center) they used wire saws ten of meters long to saw through the 5 meters of concrete thick walls. Pretty impressive. That said, it seemed like the thick walls were more of a sales gimmick than actually being useful. Whether a wall is 10 or 5000 cm of concrete, no burglar will get through; and when there really is a nuclear war going on, the safety of the servers of the majority of companies in there wouldn't matter a bit.

tombrossman 13y ago
We've got loads of German bunkers here in Jersey and I often think of what else they could be used for. Our neighbour has converted one to a totally soundproof media room, for example. The larger ones are of historic value and are being restored, but there are some good reasons to use the medium-sized ones for server rooms. The temperature is naturally very cool inside, and they all have superb ventilation due to the air filters installed in case of chemical attack (Hitler was gassed in WW1 and so obsessed with gas locks & ventilation). Physical security, that's obvious. Even those that were partially destroyed after the war were made safe by pouring more concrete to re-seal them. A highly-interconnected island with Gigabit broadband and multiple links to the UK & France. Hey, if anyone is interested in building 'Data Bunkers' this is a damn good place to start. The local government is pretty business friendly, too.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  Jersey => Channel Island, correct?
  - tombrossman 13y ago
    Yes, we are right off the French coast. Here's some background on the WW2 history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Channel_Islands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Channel_Isla...

michaelgrafl 13y ago

The client I work for has his servers in this thing, and I'll probably get to visit it soon. I'd rather they had a whisky bar and a place to smoke cigars installed somewhere in there. Still, looking forward to seeing it for myself.

prayerslayer 13y ago

One of my professors told us that UBS mirrors its whole data center to another one located in a mountain. Does anybody know if it's this particular thing? Or are there more than one of this?

chrisboesing 13y ago
From the Wired[0] article posted above[1]: "Oschwald[Co-Founder of Swiss Fort Knox] can tick off blue-chip companies such as Cisco Systems, Novartis, UBS and Deutsche Bank among his clients." [0]: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-thousand-terabytes-under-the-ground http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612298

Luc 13y ago

It seems strange to me that they piggybacked on the Fort Knox 'brand'. Now if something untoward happens at Fort Knox, their brand is impacted too. Seems like a missed opportunity to make the most of the aura of quality that 'Swiss' has (I like 'Swiss Fort' better).

oh_sigh 13y ago
What is going to happen to Fort Knox? Is a madman going to blow up a nuclear bomb inside of it, irradiating the gold for thousands of years?
- Luc 13y ago
  Ok, you're right, it's far fetched. Fort Knox is a huge place though. I was thinking along the lines of a guy going on a shooting spree or something. The Fort Knox child massacre, that kind of thing. Very very unlikely I guess. Or someone starts up a Fort Knox site on Tor, and in the end lots of people get scammed. It just seems incongruous to me to have a bunker in the Swiss Alps, more or less the pinnacle of safety, and then call it after something on the other side of the world.

duiker101 13y ago

"Sabotage proof, high-performance cooling system" "Uninterruptible power supply" Yhea....

conductr 13y ago

Good marketing gimmick for security....the things enterprise solutions are made of

neals 13y ago

Man, I love the style of this image. Anybody know a collection of these kind of images?

dexcs 13y ago

A more detailed article about it: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-thousand-terabytes-under-the-ground http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/20-...

bostonpete 13y ago

Looks like something out of Cryptonomicon.

Theodores 13y ago

This looks to me like bin Laden's Mountain Fortress, the one Donald Rumsfeld told us about: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/05/bin_ladens_fict.html http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2011/05/bin...

pasbesoin 13y ago

So, if I may ask, for the small time host, where and with whom do people consider things to be... "reasonably" secure? I'm less concerned about catastrophic physical destruction than I am about e.g. the Swiss equivalent of a national security letter / remit /warrant / whatever. Physical security is nice with respect to securing the physical hardware from unwanted access. I used to manage a site that did nothing nefarious, but that did accumulate some rather personal discussions. As I've considered whether to do so again, I've wondered where the hey I would / should host it, these days. We always policed fairly strongly, including to e.g. removing copy/pastes of full news articles. The place was never about "law breaking". But I don't want to facilitate Agency X, BigCo Y, or SocialScum Z in their efforts to flesh out personal profiles from the server end, nor to throttle "reasonable" conversation. I suppose the answer is "nowhere", these days. But maybe there is still a relatively "next best thing".