EMP GRID Services and Cyber Innovation Labs Commission and Certify EMP Facility for Fortune 500 Insurance Company

MT. PROSPECT, Ill., June 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- EMP GRID Services, LLC, a premier enterprise-class design/build/manage service provider of Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and Solar Flare Protected Data Centers, announces today that it has commissioned in the Northeastern United States, the first certified enterprise data center purpose built for EMP, HEMP (High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse), and IEMI (Intentional Electromagnetic Interference) protection.

The customer, a global Fortune 500 insurance company, required an ultra-secure, high availability, disaster recovery facility that could resist enhanced threats posed by EMP, HEMP and IEMI to be operationally resilient. Given significant changes to the threat assessment landscape since 9/11, the insurance company required additional build/design/operations criteria and enhanced protection and recovery capabilities in the event of a disaster.

Jack Pressman, managing director of Cyber Innovation Labs said, "Risks to mission-critical systems from man-made catastrophic events with impacts ranging from site-specific attacks to regional/national failures of the electrical power grid have increased significantly over the past 10 years. This tangible shift in the 'risk paradigm' has altered the planning process for critical infrastructure/operations protection in the eyes of the CIO, BCP/DR Manager and Board of Directors."  

About the Certified Data Center

The solution entailed the construction and commissioning of a 2,000 square foot, 200 kW enterprise data center located in the Northwest region of Pennsylvania. The facility included all shielding, housing, filtering and hardening of all electrical, mechanical and power infrastructure and subsystems, and adhered to MILSTD-188-125-1/2 standards. A unique discriminator for this EMP facility rests in the fact that it is a 360 degree tested, certified and resilient Tier 3+ data center shell that upholds five survivable platforms.

The facility represents the delivery of the first of four ultra-protected data center facilities with additional structures scheduled for Q1 2015 in New York City, NY, Mt. Prospect, IL (Chicago) and Harrisonburg, VA.

Michael Caruso, director of government and specialty business development for ETS-Lindgren added, "ETS-Lindgren Inc. has noted a significant increase in requirements for non-governmental EMP protected data centers over the past six months. With recent trends in locating data centers in underground locations, the requirements have included adding EMP shielding with all points of entry, treated to underground facilities. In the past, underground facilities have been mistakenly and incorrectly considered EMP protected by virtue of their being underground."  Caruso went on to say that "Underground facilities would be protected if they were completely isolated underground without any connections or signal paths to the above-ground world.  However, the exceptionally high field strengths (10,000 to 50,000 volts per meter) of an HEMP or high yield IEMI device, can easily couple through multiple paths and enter a facility due to the above-ground connections necessary to have an underground facility function."

"Data center projects demand mature, reliable and efficient methods," noted Dennis Flaum, chief executive officer of Resiliency Design Fabrication (RDF).  This project required us to perform under unique and exacting conditions, including facility installation 255 feet below the earth's surface, use of magnesium oxide boards (MgO) and an aggressive 8 week commissioning timeline," commented Flaum.  "The EMP GRID Services Team's project management enabled smooth orchestration of data center prototyping, capacity verification, EMP shielding preparation work and installation and support of electrical, lighting, cable tray, communication and security components," added Flaum.

"As a founding member of EMP GRID Services, we are able to extend our industry leading suite of colocation, cloud, and data center services (FLEXSuite) with Protected Platform as a Service (PPaaS)," said William Michael, chief executive officer of Cyber Innovation Labs (CIL).  He added, "With PPaaS, CIL can provide EMP, HEMP, and IEMI shielded colocation and 100% private, single-tenant cloud solutions for delivery of mission critical applications and services to our customers, at price points on par with less robust traditional offerings.  Risk managers now have the ability to protect vital aspects of their business from a very real and growing threat, while adhering to budget guidelines and lowering the overall risk profile for their business."

"Cupertino Electric's modular division is proud to be affiliated with EMP GRID Services," said Bruce Baxter, division manager at Cupertino Electric. "With our tightly integrated and highly configurable modular data center products, coupled with a 60-year history of engineering and construction expertise, we can deliver EMP shielded modular solutions at an attractive price point."

About EMP GRID Services
EMP GRID Services, LLC specializes in a suite of products and services that deliver next-generation Tier 3+ (2N) enterprise data center solutions with enhanced protection from industry threat designators and catastrophic failures resulting from EMP/HEMP/IEMI weapons and Solar Flare events.  Established by a consortium of industry-leading advanced engineering and data-center centric design/build specialists, EMP GRID Services collectively represents annual revenue in excess of $1.4 billion, more than 10 million square feet of delivered data center space and a project portfolio of more than 12,000 customers.  For more information, visit www.empgridservices.com.

SOURCE EMP GRID Services