On November 24 and 25, 2025, the third NATO Cloud Conference took place in Brussels. The event was organized by the NATO Digital Policy Committee and brought together representatives from NATO member states, several non-NATO countries, industry and academia. The aim of the conference was to exchange expertise on the further development and secure use of cloud technologies in the defense-related environment.
In terms of content, the focus was on zero trust and data-centric security, fog and edge computing, innovation and accreditation for operational use. In presentations and demonstrations, solutions were discussed on how modern cloud technologies can be made interoperable, secure and operationally usable more quickly.
We were also represented.
Kai Rehnelt presented the conflicting goals of faster availability of new innovative products on the one hand, and the lengthy processes involved in the approval and accreditation activities required for their use on the other, using specific examples. In times of digital solutions and software-defined defense (SDD), changes to processes are urgently and urgently required. Complex testing based on partly outdated test criteria is no longer up to date, as the war in Ukraine in particular shows, with new releases sometimes occurring on a weekly basis. A cross-domain scenario was therefore used as an example to show how a modular approach – including existing, reusable components such as non-visible data (NVD) technology – can help to speed up accreditation processes while keeping risks manageable.
As a result, it became clear that modular accreditations, the reusability of already evaluated modules and standardized descriptions of components can make an important contribution to faster operational use. At the same time, such approaches support standardization and improve interoperability between systems and domains.
Overall, the conference emphasized the need for even closer cooperation between NATO, industry and academia to further accelerate the processes and guidelines for the introduction and operational use of innovations.
An innovation only becomes a real innovation when it is actually used!
