8 minute read
NATO Edge: The NCI Agency’s Flagship Conference Successfully Launched
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NATO EDGE
Adelina Campos de Carvalho and Simon Michell, Co-Editors, NITECH
Simon: Signs of normality appear to be slowly emerging across the world. Although many of the new remote-working practices will remain, we are finally able to reconvene in person in large gatherings. And without a doubt, the NCI Agency’s new flagship conference, NATO Edge, has proven that person-to-person networking remains essential and perhaps even more popular than before the pandemic.
Adelina: Absolutely! The new conference was a resounding success. It really got off to a phenomenal start and provided a unique platform for tech leaders, NATO and national representatives to discuss the technology, collaboration and partnerships needed to future-proof NATO and the Alliance. The levels of enthusiasm from the more than 2,100 delegates and exhibitors were tangible.
Simon: Indeed – thanks to an engaging agenda of keynote speeches, presentations and panel discussions. Not forgetting all the exhibitors.
Adelina: We were also thrilled to celebrate our 10th Anniversary celebrations with delegates. I really enjoyed seeing all three of the NCI Agency’s General Managers on stage at the same time to mark this special occasion. Your ‘NATO Edge in Review’ article captures the essence of the event to a tee and there are some exceptional photos from both the main plenary theatre and the exhibition hall.
Simon: For sure. Once again, there is a raft of outstanding articles from our contributors covering quite a large spectrum of topics. I think the partnership theme is particularly strong, once again. I especially liked Serge Da Deppo’s ‘Importance of Collaboration’ article, which highlights the key role that the NCI Agency plays in Allied Command Transformation’s Innovation Hub. Emmanuel Bouillon’s piece on the NATO Industry Cyber Partnership programme is fascinating as well.
Adelina: Partnerships are a key topic. They always will be. That’s why I think the Not-For-Profit Framework (NFPF) feature outlines a very important move by the Agency – it could be a bit of a tipping point for NATO as a whole. The ability to make it easy for universities and think tanks to work with us in the early stages of a technology development journey is vital.
Simon: The Drone Follower project shows the benefits that working with these not-for-profits can bring. It will be interesting to see how the first two NFPF contracts pan out. We should definitely write about them in the future.
Adelina: I agree. Recent events have proven how useful drones are going to be in the future, both for deterrence and actual operations. Simon: It is not just drones though. The illegal invasion of Ukraine has seen the dawning of what might be considered the first digital war. It is being played out in all domains, especially space and the cybersphere. Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are also being dragged into the mix for both situational awareness and information warfare purposes. General Miglietta’s piece on the Allied Joint Forces Command, Brunssum shows how prescient the Alliance was in shoring up the defences prior to the invasion. He points out the vital role that the NCI Agency plays in supporting his Command in terms of technology and communications networks.
Simon: For me, the war in Ukraine has also shown how vital and popular the Alliance actually is. The fact that the conflict has resulted in Sweden and Finland both deciding to join NATO as full members shows the Alliance’s value. Sure, both countries were active partners before the war, but now they will be fully integrated. Anthony Moore’s explanation of how Sweden is well on the way to becoming a fully integrated part of the Federated Mission Network (FMN) is just the beginning. This type of interoperability is not an easy thing to achieve, but it is nevertheless essential.
Simon: The readers will not know, but this is, in fact, your last issue of NITECH. By the time it is published, you will have already started your new role at the European Space Agency – ESA. NITECH owes you a huge debt of gratitude. Starting a new publication is never easy, and your hard work and enthusiasm have been invaluable. Everyone on the team in Brussels, The Hague and London wish you all the very best for the future!
Adelina: Thanks Simon. It has been an absolute pleasure. I am sure my successor will enjoy the role as much as I have. Lara Vincent-Young, our new team member, will cover for me superbly until the new Co-Editor is appointed. Good luck for the future everyone.
Lara has
entered the chat
Lara: Thanks Adelina, we’re really going to miss you! It will be a difficult task to fill in for you but I’m up for the challenge and I look forward to supporting Simon and the new Co-Editor in future editions of NITECH. 23
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
The mobility networks of tomorrow
AI and machine learning: the game-changers to defending the future of autonomy
Professor Ben Azvine
Global Head of Security Research and Distinguished Engineer, BT
Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are clearly bringing new opportunities for organisations such as NATO and their Alliance Member States. The idea of an unmanned military convoy delivering supplies without putting soldiers’ lives in danger is an attractive one. CAVs are changing the way we think about mobility and transforming the digital network infrastructure that supports these vehicles. Soon, every consumer car will be connected and able to talk to everything around it using Vehicleto-Everything (V2X) technology, including other cars and smart city infrastructure.
But as with any connected computing device, the advent of CAVs brings with it security threats, as the number of computing and network components both inside and outside a car will dramatically increase – raising the attack surface for criminals to wreak havoc. For organizations such as NATO and its Alliance Member States, a hack on one or more military vehicles would be disastrous. The infamous Jeep hack in 2015 is a prime example. Two white-hat hackers were successfully able to hack a Jeep on the motorway while it was driving at 70mph. The hackers took over vehicle functions, from the windscreen wipers to disabling the accelerator – stalling the engine to bring the vehicle to a complete stop. Fiat Chrysler recalled 1.4 million cars in response, and it resulted in the first legal dispute of its kind. This hack occurred in a non-autonomous vehicle and the risks would have been amplified if the vehicle were more connected and unmanned.
New threats on the horizon
While the hackers in the Jeep incident didn’t harbour any sinister intentions, others, including terrorists and rogue nations, won’t be so kind. As connectivity expands to become the nervous system of our new mobility infrastructure, connecting our vehicles to base stations in military operational environments, we’ll start to see malicious actors spread code with increased vitality – much like how biological pathogens spread. For automakers and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) device producers, tracking all the vulnerabilities across the systems running their CAVs is a challenging task.
Firstly, this is because there are no established standards for vehicle security. The European Union (EU) only offers recommendations on how automakers and OEMs should cope with cyber security challenges for autonomous driving. The absence of clear, defined technical requirements for autonomous driving security means getting security right in autonomous cars is tricky.
Automakers and OEMs not only have to consider the security of the firmware and software against the typical threat of cyber-attacks, but it’s also made more complicated by a connected IoT system where one vulnerability could open up the system to even more threats. With a lack of standards and potentially millions of OEM devices connecting with each other, it’s nearly impossible to know exactly where the threat will come from.
Building our defences
While in some industries security breaches only disrupt business operations, for CAVs, breaches can be
a matter of life or death. For autonomous vehicles to become a reality, they need to be safe, reliable and resilient enough to earn the trust of the military. Fortunately, the solution lies with the technology that will make autonomous driving a reality in the first place: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
One project showing the budding potential of AI is the BT Mobius project, a cyber security project developed by a team at our Applied Research innovation hub at Adastral Park. The project showed that AI-powered epidemiological methods – typically used to model the spread of pathogens – could be deployed to model the spread of malware over V2X communications in CAVs.
This is potentially game-changing in turning the tide against malicious actors. If deployed across our entire mobility infrastructure, it could function as the immune system for the network, responding to an attack in the same way our white blood cells would respond to infection – using software-defined networking-based (SDN) security applications to quickly block malicious intruders at the entry point where possible, otherwise change security controls to slow down and limit the spread of the attack or divert them to firewalls before they do more damage to the network.
Although initially focused on measuring malware infection rates among CAVs, the team behind the solution has expanded its scope to look at how we protect larger fixed assets such as buildings and network equipment.
On the road to autonomous driving
Connectivity is the key force bringing us closer to a future where automation plays a central role in military scenarios, particularly where mobility is concerned. However, as we advance towards that goal, we must keep our eye on the hazards that threaten to throw us off course. Connectivity providers can help automakers and OEMs monitor and protect their connected vehicles from future threats, creating a secure operational environment that will enable them to maintain control over their cars and safeguard the passengers that ride them. AI and machine learning are the indispensable tools that will protect against cyber threats to the mobility networks of today, and tomorrow.
