Banking: Secret Data Centres

Secret Data Centres

including GCHQ's Tempora and NSA's PRISM projects

Permalink (where you can find location links)

Perhaps with greater significance in our everyday lives, underground bunkers are also used by huge banking corporations to store backups of customer records and daily financial transactions. One magnificent example can be found between Sheffield and Barnsley in the former mining community of Tankersley. Take a look at HSBC's (formerly Midland Bank) South Yorkshire National/Group Data Centre (SYNDC/SYGDC) within Tankersley's Wentworth Business Park.

The secure ring-fenced hardened computer centre – completed back in 1981 at a cost of £40 million – is mostly hidden underground with just the surface entrances showing. The numerous ventilation funnels surrounding the site have led the locals to nickname it "Teletubbyland", as they resemble the voice trumpets on the children's TV show. It can be seen on Google Earth at high resolution but even better, it is available on Windows Live Local as a superb Bird's Eye view (shown further below). Still in Yorkshire, another example can be found built into a hillside between Halifax and Sowerby Bridge. It is known as the Halifax Bank of Scotland's (HBOS) Copley Data Centre.

Take a look near junction 31 of the M62 at Normanton near Wakefield. There's plenty going on around the north side of the village of Ackton. One site at Loscoe Lane roundabout off Havertop Lane is earmarked for the state-of-the-art replacement Divisional HQ for West Yorkshire Police, while another off Premier Way North is the new Northern Data Centre for the global secure financial operations of HSBC. The data centre, which was approaching completion in Summer 2009, includes a massive server hall (250 metres long by 100 metres wide), two dedicated electricity sub-stations, two DRUPS (Diesel Rotary Uninterruptible Power Supplies), underground fuel tanks and an Argonite fire suppression equipment storage building.

Meanwhile, in 2009 HSBC opened a new data centre "at a secret location in suburban North London", according to various trade journals and technology news websites. However, I can exclusively reveal that it has been constructed on the old Glaxo Smith Kline Beecham site at what is now known as Quadrant Park, Mundells, Welwyn Garden City in Hertfordshire. You might be fascinated by the detailed architect plans on the local council website.

Tragically during construction in November 2008, the HSBC Hertfordshire Data Centre cost one man his life and caused many others serious injuries when a cylinder of Argonite gas exploded and shot around the building like a missile, destroying everything in its path. The Health and Safety Executive issued three prohibition notices on Crown House Data Solutions (a division of construction company Laing O'Rourke) for serious breaches of statutory safety standards.

HSBC was poised to start construction of a £300 million northern data centre at Vangarde Business Park, Monks Cross, Huntington, York after receiving formal planning permission in May 2009. Again, all the detailed drawings were there on the council website for all to see. Due to the economic downturn, the project was suddenly halted in December 2009, to the dismay of the city's business leaders.

The German specialists e-Shelter are developing what will be Europe's second largest data centre campus – behind their own Frankfurt site – just a stone's throw from RAF High Wycombe's Strike Command bunker, north west of Saunderton Station at Bledlow Ridge. The former Molins cigarette machinery factory (which was previously a WWII munitions works) on Haw Lane has been demolished. In its place will be four data centre halls which will be grass covered to blend in with the surrounding fields. Another new data centre campus is well underway at the Broadoaks Estate in West Byfleet, Surrey. It is within the grounds of a manor house which was used by the MoD's Defence Operational Analysis Establishment (DOAE) from 1965 until 1996.

Think of Brimble Hill at Burderop near Wroughton Airfield, on the outskirts of Swindon, Wiltshire. Such a quaint sounding place and yet it was once the site of a USAF military hospital. After World War Two, the twenty buildings of the USAF facility were put to use by the UK Government for "psychiatric research" and subsequently an NHS Mental Health Unit. But even that's gone now. In its place? Not one but two huge data centres with impressive security systems.

The Brimble Hill, Burderop data centre site was specially built in the 1990s for Woolwich Building Society operating under the name NuDelta. In 2001, the NuDelta server engineers were made redundant when Barclays took over the operations and consolidated their activities at their own data centre in Gloucester. Later, Compaq moved in and extended the facilities and since Compaq were acquired by Hewlett Packard, it has been used as a key part of HP's data server infrastructure.

Hewlett Packard operates another massive data centre campus at Broadland Business Park in Thorpe St. Andrew, east of Norwich, which was originally built in 2007 for Norwich Union.

In November 2010, the Government announced plans to destroy all data and equipment associated with the cancelled National ID Card Scheme. The special Ministry of Defence grade secure data centre which was geared up to run the project is owned and operated by famous French defence contractor Thales. It is sited just a short drive from Junction 3 on the M18 at Doncaster, on the corner of White Rose Way, Carolina Way and Wisconsin Drive.