Nato chooses Oracle to secure battlefield communications

Nato has announced it has chosen Oracle to secure battlefield communications.

The organisation’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) has selected Oracle and Druid Software to build and secure private 5G networks used for Nato’s research, war gaming and cyber defence exercises.

This follows a recent Oracle announcement that the Nato Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) is moving its mission-critical workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Based in Tallinn, Estonia, on the front line against Russia, the CCDCOE is a multinational cyber defence hub. It is said to support Nato and its member nations with interdisciplinary expertise in the field of cyber defence research, training, and exercises covering technology, strategy, operations and law.

The announced technology, to be developed and deployed by Oracle partner Druid Software, which makes cellular network systems, will, says Oracle and Nato, be pivotal in helping enable high-performance connectivity for cyber defence exercises that protect critical infrastructure from external threats.

Tõnis Saar, director of CCDCOE, said: “Secure, resilient 5G adds a vital layer to existing communications, while portable, private networks with seamless roaming enable faster, more effective data sharing, keeping Nato forces a step ahead of adversaries.”

After a pilot programme, the CCDCOE said it verified Oracle’s 5G Security Edge Protection Proxy (Sepp) as a trusted service for securing 5G roaming communications across Nato member networks.

Oracle’s Sepp software was deployed on a Druid 5G “Raemis” core network over Oracle Roving Edge devices. The verification of this technology setup will enable Oracle to help Nato safeguard sensitive battlefield and research data and deliver seamless, secure connectivity between allied forces, according to the statement from Oracle, Nato and Druid.

Andrew Morawski, executive vice-president and general manager at Oracle Regulated Industries, said: “Safeguarding mission-critical and sensitive information over communications networks is paramount to national and global security.

“By bolstering 5G data security across roaming networks, Oracle technologies will help Nato forces enhance data integrity and gain operational advantages in high-stakes scenario planning and testing.”

And for the Oracle partner, Druid, CEO Liam Kenny said: “Advanced 5G networks must deliver uncompromising data security to protect mission-critical communications. The combination of our Raemis platform with Oracle’s technologies provides Nato with secure and robust roaming and network federation capabilities, for greater interoperability and for operational superiority in high-pressure scenarios.”

In an article on Informa TechTarget’s SearchNetworking site, security author Michael Cobb looks at 5G’s security architecture, and how it differs from 4G. 5G is billed as not only faster and with greater capacity, but as a technology that provides increased security and privacy compared with previous cellular generations. 

As for Oracle’s Roving Edge infrastructure, it is described in this Informa TechTarget article by Tom Nolle, principal analyst at Andover Intel, as “most appealing to enterprises that are already customers of its cloud services. But Oracle’s Roving Edge approach is the most generalised of all the cloud provider edge models. It includes processing of content, AI and machine learning, remote and distributed computing, and IoT [internet of things].”