Why AI Data Centers Are Becoming the Next Critical Infrastructure Target

AI Data Centers: From Compute Engines to Critical Infrastructure

Practically overnight, AI data centers have become engines of the global economy. They now power everything from industrial automation and supply-chain modeling to defense systems and complex scientific research – not to mention answering some of our more existential questions (like, how does a Great Dane know that a chihuahua is also a dog?).

Regardless of how they’re used, these AI workloads run continuously, consume enormous amounts of power, and rely on tightly orchestrated OT systems such as chilled-water plants, switchgear, and building automation controls (BAC).

As data centers grow more essential, they are also becoming far more attractive to adversaries. The pattern is familiar: as soon as an ecosystem becomes operationally indispensable, it almost immediately turns into a high-impact target.

Today, AI data centers are depended on to nearly the same degree as traditional critical infrastructure, such as communications networks, banking systems, and public utilities. Any disruption to these crucial services affects not just availability, but also safety, economic stability, and communal trust.

OT Systems: The Hidden Dependency Behind AI Data Centers

We fortunately haven’t yet seen a widely publicized, crippling cyberattack take an AI data center fully offline. But there’s little reason to believe that when it happens, it will look much different from the attacks that have already disrupted manufacturing plants or water and energy facilities.

Those incidents rarely begin with an attacker storming the most sensitive systems head-on. Instead, they usually start in IT environments, where weak identity and access controls allow unauthorized actors to enter the network undetected. From there, the attackers move laterally – probing, escalating privileges, and patiently navigating until they reach systems that actually control physical processes. In a manufacturing plant, that might be a PLC or an HMI. In an AI data center, it could just as easily be the systems that regulate cooling, power distribution, or building automation.

In this way, attackers can wreak havoc even without disrupting AI infrastructure directly. Interfering with a chiller or misconfiguring a power management system can be enough to trigger safety thresholds. Once that happens, automated shutdowns do exactly what they’re designed to do: protect equipment by taking it offline. GPU clusters go dark, workloads halt, and recovery becomes time-consuming and expensive.

It’s also important to recognize that not every equipment outage has a malicious origin. Human error, rushed configuration changes, or simple mechanical failure can produce the same results as a high-stakes cyberattack. A single mistake during maintenance or a delayed response to a malfunctioning system can cause temperatures to spike or power conditions to drift outside safe limits, forcing an emergency shutdown that impacts the entire facility and disrupts millions of AI-powered workflows.

This is precisely the point where access becomes critical.

AI data centers depend on specialists who must reach specific systems quickly, often under pressure and almost always remotely. When access is too open, the risk of misuse and lateral movement increases. But when access is too slow or cumbersome, response times suffer, and small issues escalate into major outages.

In AI data centers, downtime isn’t just an IT problem. It’s an operational, safety, and business risk all at once.

Why Traditional Remote Access Models Fail in AI Data Centers

Despite these realities, many AI data centers still rely on broad VPN access and other remote access tools originally designed for enterprise IT rather than cyber-physical systems (CPS).

These legacy access models assume trust where none should exist. VPNs authenticate users but expose networks by default, making it easier for attackers to move laterally once access is achieved. Jump servers can add a checkpoint, but they typically enforce access at a system or network level, not at the fine-grained, function-specific level that OT environments demand.

Other enterprise tools, such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), were built to protect user sessions and applications in IT settings. In OT-centric environments, they can struggle to provide the system-aware, protocol-level controls needed to safely manage access to CPS – especially when legacy equipment, real-time operational constraints, or offline operation are involved.

Put simply, much of today’s AI infrastructure is still protected by access models that weren’t built for CPS environments – where digital actions can trigger immediate physical consequences, and where precise, controlled access is a prerequisite for safe and reliable operation.

What Resilience Means in AI Data Centers

As AI data centers take on the characteristics of critical infrastructure, security priorities inevitably change. The goal is no longer just to prevent breaches, but to ensure systems can withstand disruption, respond safely under pressure, and recover quickly when something goes wrong.

That begins with rethinking access. In cyber-physical environments, access is an operational control that directly affects safety, uptime, and incident response. Engineers and vendors need fast, precise access to specific systems, without being exposed to the broader network or forced into risky workarounds during emergencies.

Resilience also depends on minimizing exposure by design. When critical systems are easily discoverable, they are easier to target. By contrast, when access is narrowly scoped and identity-driven, the blast radius of both cyber incidents and human error is dramatically reduced.

Just as importantly, security controls must reflect operational reality. AI data centers rely on a mix of legacy OT, modern automation, third-party equipment, and environments that cannot always be online or rearchitected on demand. Any access model that forces disruption, redesign, or excessive friction ultimately increases risk rather than reducing it.

In critical moments – a cooling failure, a power anomaly, or an unexpected system fault – security should enable the right response, not slow it down. The ability to connect the right technician to the right system at the right time is foundational to safe, reliable operations.

Securing AI Data Centers as Critical Infrastructure

AI data centers may be new, but the risks they face are not. They follow the same patterns seen across critical sectors like manufacturing and energy, where cyber incidents, human error, and system failures converge on operational technology.

As AI is embedded across industries, the resilience of the data centers that support it becomes a matter of broader economic and societal stability. Protecting them requires moving beyond traditional IT security assumptions and treating access as a core operational control.

Interested in learning how Cyolo helps keep AI data centers safe and secure? Read more or schedule a demo of our secure remote access solution for OT and critical infrastructure.