National Security and Investment Bill

Implications for data centre operators and cloud service providers

We held a briefing session with DCMS on Monday 16th November.  Officials gave operators an overview of the Bill, which extends the government’s power to scrutinise acquisitions, mergers and other transactions in the interests of national security.  Data centres have been identified as one of the new sectors to which these extended powers will apply. DCMS seeks input from the sector on the proposed definition of data infrastructure and whether it will capture transactions that could give unfriendly entities access to sensitive data or data that could pose a potential threat to national security.  We pre-submitted questions and many of these were addressed in the briefing. 

You can find the Bill itself here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-security-and-investment-bill

The Consultation on Sectors in Scope of the Mandatory Regime is here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/national-security-and-investment-mandatory-notification-sectors

The DCMS presentation to operators and the Data Infrastructure information pack, both tailored to data centre operators, are below:

Read the Data Infrastructure information pack here

The DCMS presentation can be accessed here