NATO CIO: Alliance-wide classified cloud system is in the works

NATO EDGE 2024 — In an effort to move toward data centricity, NATO is in the process of creating a classified cloud system in which member nations can share secret information, NATO’s chief information officer told Breaking Defense. 

“It puts data together that right now is in different repositories,” Manfred Boudreaux-Dehmer said in an interview. “The very fact of collocating the data in the same instance, or within the same environment or infrastructure, is very, very helpful. Moving into a common cloud environment also forces you to think about data differently and to prepare it for the move, which in itself will be conducive to analyzing the data later.” 

He said that the ultimate goal is to get all 32 member nations on the classified cloud, but the timeline of this depends on how quickly each country is capable of moving its data.

“It’s not an easy process, because you’ve got subject matter experts coming in from nations, and there’s a lot of concerns and technical considerations that the team has to work through. So it’s moving fast, but I don’t have a definite timeline,” he said.

Currently, there is a group of about five to 10 nations who volunteered to draft an implementation directive which will serve as a framework for how the alliance can handle secret data in a cloud environment, Boudreaux-Dehmer said. He added that he did not know all of the countries on the drafting team, but confirmed that the United States and the United Kingdom are part of the group and that all the countries are “experienced in the cloud journey.” 

After the drafted directive is completed, all 32 nations must agree on it before it is approved and nations can start working toward accreditation and pilot processes. Once one country is accredited, it makes it easier for other countries to follow suit, Stephen Lewis, who serves as the acting chief of the cloud portfolio at the NATO Communications and Information Agency, told Breaking Defense.

However, “this doesn’t mean it’s an easy bar for all of NATO” to be accredited, he said.

Chief of Staff of the Allied Command Transformation at NATO Simon Asquith shared the CIO’s sentiment of needing a classified cloud during a panel discussion, saying that data centricity is vital in bolstering NATO’s technological innovation.

“Number one, focus on digital transformation and move to a classified cloud,” Asquith said when listing his priorities for digital innovation. “Without that, we won’t be able to [conduct] multi-domain operations. So we need a good digital backbone. We need a classified cloud as quickly as possible so we can integrate machine learning tools and deliver information at a speed of relevance and allow commands to make decisions. If we can’t do that, I think we will fail.” 

Boudreaux-Dehmer explained that following suspicious Russian cyber activity right before the Kremlin invaded Ukraine, Ukraine moved its sensitive data out of data centers and into the cloud. He said this served as an “inspiration” for NATO to move to move data to the cloud and eventually build a classified cloud system. 

“Situations cannot be compared between NATO and the Ukraine, but it has been very, very inspirational whenever I had conversations with people in the Ukraine who were involved in the cloud migration. It’s inspirational moving faster and giving it a good push for us, the cloud really is a prerequisite for a lot of things.”