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According to reports, the world and data centers along with it, will again find itself at threat from solar storms, which have the ability to take out satellites, telecommunications and electric equipment.
The solar storm season, according to NASA, could kick off this week, with a series of solar flares (heightened amounts of energy released in the form of magnetic fields form the sun).
NASA said as the Sun reaches the maximum of an 11-year cycle, solar flares will become more regular and severe.
The worst solar storm to date took part in 1859, according to NASA.
"The blast peppered Earth with the most energetic protons in half a millennium, induced electrical currents that set telegraph offices on fire, and sparked Northern Lights over Cuba and Hawaii," NASA said.
In an article on NASA’s website, which can be viewed here, NASA solar physicist Lika Guhathakurta said a similar storm today could "knock us for a loop".
"Modern society depends on high-tech systems such as smart power grids, GPS and satellite communications – all of which are vulnerable to solar storms," Guhathakurta said.
She said a solar storm has the capability of bringing power down for weeks to months, bringing banking and financial networks offline and seriously disrupting commerce.
"According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, a century-class solar storm could have the economic impact of 20 hurricane Katrinas," NASA said.
DatacenterDynamics blogger Peter Hannaford, of managing director of Datacenterpeople looked closely at the affects such an event could have on the data center in a post on 9 June.
He referred to an event which occurred in 1989 in an effort to make data center operators take notice of the risk.
"A solar storm during the 1989 caused the entire Hydro-Quebec power grid to fail, leaving millions of residents of north-eastern Canada without power for up to nine hours," Hannaford said.
"The event also caused a transformer failure at a nuclear power plant in New Jersey."
And it is not just power. Earlier this year I blogged about data centers using copper fiber and the risk they could find themselves due to its conductive properties. Those using dark fiber, however, will only have to keep power issues at bay.