Construction will soon begin on the nation’s first cybersecurity headquarters, a $1.5 billion facility which already being billed as the “Spy Center.”
Located in Camp Williams, Utah, the Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center – known as the Utah Data Center – will address critical issues of national cybersecurity, compiling what Utah’s Deseret News called “dizzying volumes of data for the intelligence community.”
Given the recent high-profile incidents of national and international cybercrime -- including WikiLeaks, the Stuxnet worm and China’s “Aurora” project -- the U.S. government sees the Utah Data Center as a potential crucial component in battling these technological threats.
The Deseret News reported that a White House document identified the Utah Data Center as addressing “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter.”
Groundbreaking on the project occurred yesterday (Jan. 6), and construction is set to be completed by October 2013. The Utah Data Center is expected to employ 100 to 200 security professionals.