A secure approach to information superiority

Regional geopolitical drivers are firmly on the radars of governments and defence organisations, and the complexion of inter-country relationships in all regions has shifted.

Alliances that would once have been considered beneficial to trade relations only five short years ago have become strained, and are being fast replaced by security-oriented partnerships like AUKUS and ‘diplomatic networks' such as the quadrilateral security dialogue, to name but two.

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, governments and militaries alike are under pressure to move faster as well, particularly in developing secure information gathering and intelligence sharing capabilities.

As threats and relationships change, intelligence gathering capabilities are expected to keep pace. These would once have led to five- or 10-year programs of work, but must instead be executed in a more agile, iterative fashion - in months, not years.

To meet these truncated timeframes, intelligence-led organisations must change entire ways of working. That’s incredibly difficult for those used to working in a structured and well-planned manner that has remained consistent for decades, if not longer.

As more and more military and defence organisations around the world move in that direction, there is pressure on all countries to follow suit.

In pursuit of information superiority

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The current direction for many of these organisations is to develop superior decision-making capabilities and ‘information superiority’.

In a nationally and regionally security-conscious world, it is more critical than ever before to be able to get the right information to the right people at the right time. It’s a mantra that has driven data analytics projects in a range of domains and industries, though none that share quite the same characteristics as military environments.

The deployed environment is typically complex, comprising asset fleets that may be geographically dispersed, and operating in remote or hazardous locations outside the reach of communications systems. Data-based operational needs are all typically intensive, such as combining hydrological intelligence with video and other data points to build up a composite picture of an emerging threat such as a new military installation.

Decision-makers must be able to collate information from across a range of different sources in the deployed environment and pull it together to make good decisions that create this information superiority.

This volume and granularity of data is difficult to transmit over conventional, mostly satellite-based communications networks. Many military decision-makers may only get access to this data if and when a vessel docks or other physical contact with a field asset is made.

Until then, they must rely on partial information upon which to base their decisions. While this remains the case, attaining information superiority will be difficult to achieve.

A path forward

To achieve a state of information superiority, much of the commentary continues to focus on driving improvements in the speed and resiliency of communications networks themselves.

Although satellite communications are improving, such as with the arrival of low earth orbit constellations, this is arguably the wrong way - or at the very least an expensive way - to couch the challenge of reaching a state of information superiority.

An alternative lens through which to view and approach the problem is to redefine it entirely.

By that, we mean to re-examine the way that military assets, personnel and operations exchange information securely with one another in the first instance, such that only the most important intelligence within a range of data sources is identified, extracted and transmitted within the boundaries of existing constrained communications networks.

This approach draws some parallels with civilian applications of internet of things (IoT) and ‘edge’ computing technology, which seek to process information close to its point of capture and transmit only the most important portions back to a central point for further analysis or decision-making.

The approach we have put forward makes use of a network of nodes that are installed at all sites wanting to exchange information. Templates called schemas encapsulate military logic on what is considered to be critical information by decision-makers, as well as instructions or where and to whom to send that information if it is identified within a captured dataset. An example of desirable information may be co-ordinates contained within a video file captured during reconnaissance.

Crucially within this model, the entire video file does not need to be packaged up and transmitted: instead, only the most crucial information is extracted and placed within a small, lightweight file or ‘container’ that can be sent over an existing low-bandwidth connection, or as an emailed attachment, or even on a lightweight flash storage device.

Likewise, central decision-makers can codify fresh instructions and distribute them within the same lightweight file structure.

In this way, secure information exchange occurs, and information superiority is achieved, within the confines of current operating environments, an attractive proposition as governments and militaries are pressured to act quickly and decisively to mitigate against faster-moving targets and the shifting sands of regional geopolitics.

Christian Lucarelli is the vice president, sales APAC at Nintex.