Securing military sensors
Militaries around the world are turning to the Internet of Things (IoT) to improve their situational awareness in the battlefield. Sensors and cameras mounted on soldiers, on equipment in the field, and on airplanes and drones in the air can survey the mission landscape and relay data to the command center in real time, enhancing decision making for military commanders.
Yet while IoT can dramatically improve battlefield success by enhancing troop situational awareness, it also creates greater data management and security challenges. As the quantity of data collected from sensors explodes, militaries require an ever-larger infrastructure to store it, analyze it, and put it to use—an expensive proposition if undertaken on-premises.
Moreover, as the sensor network grows, so, too, does the risk of cyberattack. Think of it like guarding a door. With just one door to protect, you can stand there with a gun, and no one gets in. But with millions of doors to protect, security becomes more problematic. In the same way, every sensor is a potential entry point for an attack, making security an increasing challenge as more sensors are activated. And as malware makes its way into a sensor, it can move sideways reaching other sensors within the network as it searches for an opportunity to move up the technology stack. It may take weeks or months, but eventually the malware finds a path one level higher, slowly wreaking havoc throughout the entire system.
The Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform can help address these challenges. With Azure, militaries can reduce costs by opting for a hybrid cloud environment in which they keep high-security information on-premises while storing lower classification data in the cloud. And with new technologies like Azure Stack, developers can write applications once and then run them in the cloud or within their own datacenters, easily moving these workloads between the public and private cloud as demands dictate. All this data is easily accessible regardless of where it is stored, allowing military commanders to quickly analyze large volumes of information and turn it into actionable insights.
The current geo political landscape is hard to predict, where new forces like NATO quick reaction forces are formed that require high standards of agility. This agility requires easy access everywhere to unlimited computing power with security measurements at the right level. Azure provides this around the world. The only challenge will be to get access to an Internet connection without having to move around dozens of containers and power generators.
Not only does Azure offer defense organizations a cost-effective way to manage their IoT data, but it also helps to guard against cyberattacks. With Azure Machine Learning, militaries can run predictive models that forecast vulnerabilities based on past cyberattack patterns. They can also predict the path of an attack once malware enters the networked system, stopping it in its tracks before it causes further damage.
And with Microsoft Azure Key Vault, militaries can securely encrypt their data using keys stored in hardware security modules (HSMs). In addition, they can scale Key Vault as their cryptographic needs grow and create backups both in the cloud and on-premises within their own HSMs. It’s important to note that Key Vault is designed so that Microsoft does not see or extract customers’ keys. Moreover, Microsoft allows customers to even use third-party products like the Dutch KeyLocker on-premise key management as an alternative. We also support a bring-your-own-key environment, which enables militaries to generate their own HSM-protected key and transfer it to Azure Key Vault. Simply put, we provide customers with many options for encrypting their data and keeping it safe.
IoT is poised to transform defense operations by providing real-time data that dramatically improves military situational awareness. Yet in order to reap the full benefits of IoT, militaries must overcome the operational and security obstacles that stand in the way. Microsoft Azure provides a secure, cost-effective solution for managing large volumes of data, while helping militaries to secure their IoT networks. To learn more, please see the Microsoft Azure webpage. Also, look to empower your agency by trying one of the following trials: Azure Government Trial, Office 365 Government Trial.
