Golden
“Most people think of us as a
financial institution, but the network is the brand,” says Rick Knight, Visa’s head of global
systems operations and engineering. “If it goes down, lives are on the line.”
He’s talking
in a briefing room, its walls opaque like any other’s. But with the push of a button, they become
transparent glass, revealing what’s beyond–a NASA-like command center with a 40-by-14-foot wall of
screens, including Visa’s network overlaid on a world map. The network’s vital signs are constantly
tracked, showing, at the moment, 8,000 transaction messages a second.
This is Visa’s OCE, or
Operations Center East, the biggest, newest, and most advanced of its U.S. data centers. It is a
data-security heaven–and Visa’s acknowledgment that hackers are increasingly savvy, that data is
an ever-desirable black-market commodity, and that the best way to keep Visa (and its 150 million
daily transactions) safe is to ensconce its network inside a heavily fortified castle that
instantly responds to threats.
The OCE’s 130 workers have two jobs: Keep hackers out and
keep the network up, no matter what. That’s why rule No. 1 for visitors is: Never reveal its
location. “On the eastern seaboard” is as specific as Visa will allow.
