The government has begun classing data centres as critical infrastructure – which gives them greater protection – because of their importance to the UK’s cyber security and economy.

The critical national infrastructure (CNI) designation is given to systems considered necessary for a country to function and upon which daily life depends. The list was last updated in 2015 when the space and defence sectors were classed as CNI. Other key assets include energy and water supply, transportation, health and telecommunications.

Technology secretary Peter Kyle said that giving data centres the same protections should make them less likely to be compromised during outages, cyber attacks, and adverse weather events. This also puts them on an equal footing with other key utilities.

The impact of data centre security breaches can be profound and even risks lives. For example, the Crowd Strike incident earlier this summer affected around 60% of GP practices, which led to disruption to software holding...