Cybersecurity
Increasingly, cyber is being seen as another dimension of war, creating opportunities to spy on and
sabotage opponents.
right number of faces on the screen. And, of course, security. To ensure such effectiveness, Nato works in partnership with vendors to deliver the security and utility it needs, as well as mitigating risk by working with many suppliers and then having in-house solutions. “We work with industry suppliers to get past problems, such as only having 25 mosaics on a video call,” he adds, noting that for the mission-critical, and, as he describes, “secret” communication, sometimes the technology marketplace just won’t cut it. “[For highly classified calls] I cannot use cloud-based systems available only on the internet,” he explains. “Here, the only way we can secure our systems and guarantee they won’t be connected to is to go properly offline for that extra layer of security.” Indeed, Massart’s Nato protocols dictate that for calls such as the German incident, it would only be secure if they had members of a security team dialled-in or participants didn’t use the internet at all. “We sometimes create ‘air gaps’ which allows communication between us but still uses telecom provider lines without technically being connected to the internet,” he says. However, as he emphasises, such an approach isn’t always viable. With the alliance currently undergoing an organisational cultural shift to further democratise access to information, it’s hardly likely the need for communication, and the incumbent digital risk, can be minimised. As Massart admits, this creates a constant security risk. “We want to share more information internally to deliver superiority [in performance] via information awareness… but this has created an interesting problem,” he adds.
An age of risk However, it’s Massart’s view that in an age that is increasingly digital-first, security risks will inevitably exist. He notes the growing threat of criminal and state-sponsored cyber espionage and hacking as well as its growing sophistication, backdropped by an
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increasingly fractious geopolitics. “As we increase our reliance on digital technology in a more interconnected world, we’re at the same time exposing ourselves more than without it,” he explains. “That comes with its own challenges.” These are not challenges that Massart and his team are likely to shrink from. His agency was conceived during the pandemic, a time when every organisation, not just military alliances, were struggling with a digital transition. “It was a brutal transition,” he says. Indeed, he describes how an alliance whose strength was fostered by effective in-person communication (built around specific protocols and guidelines) needed this to be translated to a digital realm during the first days of the pandemic: speedily, at scale and securely. This meant attention to details such as how to replicate formal meetings, how to create platforms where it was obvious who was call leader and designing roundtable settings for senior leaders to communicate effectively online. And, by the time Russia invaded Ukraine, Nato’s digital communication had increased by 1,000% since February 2020. “Capitals needed to talk to each other without being physically present in Brussels while maintaining all security precautions. Our challenge was to protect that security,” he says. It’s the responsibility of security that Massart takes seriously, noting the role of his in-house cybersecurity teams in this. As he says: “They’re going to be using my services.” Of course, it’s not just the services themselves that are important, but how they’re used – especially by senior officials in classified calls. While it is such high-profile individuals, and high-stakes decisions, that will obviously get the most attention if this goes wrong, it’s the protocols and digital solutions behind them that will then come into question too. As Massart sees it, the pressure is on. “We have to withstand anything that comes at us,” he concludes. While, for many, Massart’s operations are largely ‘behind-the-scenes’, it’s an all-or- nothing sign-off a movie director would be proud of. ●
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
Gorodenkoff/
Shutterstock.com
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