home/glossary/Cold Site

Cold Site

nounverified· unreviewed·updated Aug 30, 2026

Backup site that can be up and operational in a relatively short time span, such as a day or two. Provision of services, such as telephone lines and power, is taken care of, and the basic office furniture might be in place, but there is unlikely to be any computer equipment, even though the building might well have a network infrastructure and a room ready to act as a server room. In most cases, cold sites provide the physical location and basic services.

polysemousMWENISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2

Senses

NISTIR 7298: Glossary of Key Information Security Terms, Revision 2sense 2 pending review

A backup facility that has the necessary electrical and physical components of a computer facility, but does not have the computer equipment in place. The site is ready to receive the necessary replacement computer equipment in the event that the user has to move from their main computing location to an alternate site.

Classifications

Entity Type

Physical0%rule-basedmulti_axis_classifier_low_confidence.v1
?unassignedlast reviewed

Sensitivity

Regulated78%llm-generatedllm:claude-haiku-4-5
?unassignedlast reviewed

Information Class

unclassified

Variants

plural
Cold Sites
possessive
Cold Site's
pluralpossessive
Cold Sites'