Bengaluru, Sep 18: As the pace of data centre and digital infrastructure development continues to accelerate, organisations are investing in resilience to protect this crucial industry, according to new research from Economist Enterprise, sponsored by FM. Yet the global survey of 1,800 senior executives found a significant preparedness gap: only around 30% of organisations test compound-shock scenarios, despite increasingly interconnected risks across cyber, energy, climate, supply-chain and other systems.
At the same time, organisations across the digital infrastructure ecosystem are under pressure to move quickly, from developers and operators to tenants, investors and the partners that support them. The opportunity is to strengthen long-term preparedness as they grow, manage costs and scale new technologies, helping ensure resilience and protection measures remain top of mind throughout every stage of a project’s lifecycle.
The global survey—covering 21 markets—found a persistent tension between resilience and near-term business priorities. While 75% said they have dedicated resilience funding in place, nearly seven in 10 respondents cite short-term financial and growth targets as a barrier to strengthening resilience further.
For many data centre tenants, growth, efficiency and AI-related priorities can sometimes compete with longer-term resilience objectives, underscoring the challenge of balancing immediate business demands with future preparedness.
The research shows the most significant disruptions increasingly emerge when risks interact, creating the potential for operational, financial and growth impacts that are difficult to anticipate when risks are assessed in isolation.
“The digital infrastructure economy is moving extraordinarily fast, from site selection and power procurement to construction and bringing new capacity online,” said Christopher Dempsey, senior vice president, FM Intellium. “As organisations scale, the challenge is not simply managing individual risks, but understanding how cyber, energy, climate and supply-chain disruptions can interact across increasingly interconnected systems. Resilience needs to keep pace with growth and inform critical decisions early.”
The research comes as digital infrastructure becomes increasingly critical to business activity and increasingly interconnected with energy systems, supply chains and other physical infrastructure. More than nine in 10 respondents said they had experienced a material disruption during the past five years.
Cyber risk remains one of the most widely recognised threats, with 88% of respondents saying cyber-attacks could have a systemic impact on digital infrastructure and 87% identifying cyber-attacks as a likely source of disruption. In response, 91% of organisations are implementing cyber-security measures.
Energy availability is also emerging as a major challenge. More than three-quarters of respondents identified grid capacity constraints as both a likely source of disruption and a potential systemic challenge and 87% are adopting energy demand management strategies.
Despite the range of risks organisations face, the research suggests preparedness for multiple simultaneous disruptions remains less developed. This leaves many organisations testing individual threats in isolation, even as digital infrastructure becomes more exposed to cascading risks across cyber, energy, climate, supply-chain and operational systems.
“India has a unique opportunity to build resilience into digital infrastructure from the outset. Organizations that do so will be better positioned to support growth, attract capital and navigate an increasingly complex risk environment,” shared Sumit Khanna, CEO, FMIC India – Reinsurance Branch.
“Our research shows how a single constraint, such as limited grid capacity or water scarcity, can have a cumulative, knock-on effect across the digital infrastructure ecosystem,” said Jonathan Birdwell, global head of thought leadership at Economist Enterprise.
“The challenge is that each stakeholder in the value chain is more focused on securing their own facility or connection, whereas genuine resilience requires understanding how risks interact across the system. It also requires balancing the pace of growth with long-term constraints such as energy, land and technology. Closing the gap between where risk lives—at the level of the system—and where it is managed will be a defining challenge for the industry over the next decade,” added Birdwell.