UIDAI data centre: 2,000 sq ft room with digital fortress, ‘demilitarised zone’

Inside a nondescript building in the eastern part of Bangalore stands a server farm, a cluster of computers. It is a building without a sign and visitors are strictly forbidden. In this building sits the data centre of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

Location of the centre: "somewhere in Whitefield suburbs", is all UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani would tell this newspaper.

The centre forms the back support of what has just become the world's largest biometric identification system. At last count, there were 18 crore (180 million) enrollments, and of these, a tenth of India's population already has an official identity number.

The UIDAI just surpassed the other large biometric databases in the world, including that of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and of US-VISIT, the biometric identity system of the US Department of Homeland Security.

Other than its own staff, even other UIDAI employees need to provide bonafide reasons 24 hours in advance for their visit to be cleared by the data centre head. Only authorised visitors can walk past the armed perimeter security and go through layers of metal detectors and personal checks.

Security is a primary need as hackers are getting savvier by the day. Data is not just an extremely saleable commodity in the black market but also a vulnerable target to cyber terrorism.

"The data centre is a very cold, dark place," described Pramod Verma, chief technology architect at UIDAI. It is also a digital fortress with several layers of security, he said.

The data centre's physical dimensions are not impressive: a 2,000 sq ft room housing an array of about 700 computers, a testament to the rapid miniaturisation of technology. But within those computers is a humongous biometric database — the digital fingerprint scans, iris scans, photographs and personal details of over 18 crore Indians and counting.

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