Yandex strikes highlight data security risks in Latvia

Ukrainian strikes on Russian company Yandex’s data centres have raised concerns about data security and backup copies in Latvia, LSM reports. Tet data centre director Māris Sperga said data should not be stored in just one place during a crisis, while cybersecurity blogger Elvis Strazdiņš warned about risks linked to Russian digital services, which are not subject to EU data protection rules.

Data held at Yandex’s centres could be permanently lost if backup copies were not stored elsewhere. Sperga said both individuals and businesses should check that they have backups, and that the safest approach is to keep data in different geographical locations.

Tet has seven data centres in Latvia, geographically distributed on both sides of the Daugava, as well as a centre in Salaspils. The company also keeps data and copies at a backup centre in Frankfurt. Sperga said Tet has had two locations outside Latvia, in Germany, since 2024.

Data and backup arrangements are not the same for every service, Sperga said, so customers should check what service they use and its security conditions. He said businesses are currently more likely than individuals to ask about these issues.

Sperga also said work began in the first days of the war to migrate data from Ukrainian data centres to Latvia and Germany.