NATO taps Google for air-gapped sovereign cloud

NATO has hired Google to provide "air-gapped" sovereign cloud services and AI in "completely disconnected, highly secure environments."

The Chocolate Factory will support the military alliance's Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC) in a move designed to improve its digital infrastructure and strengthen its data governance.

NATO was formed in 1949 after Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the North Atlantic Treaty. Since then, 20 more European countries have joined, most recently Finland and Sweden.

US President Donald Trump has criticized fellow members' financial contribution to the alliance and at times cast doubt over how likely the US is to defend its NATO allies.

In an announcement this week, Google Cloud said the "significant, multimillion-dollar contract" with the NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) would offer highly secure, sovereign cloud capabilities. The agreement promises NATO "uncompromised data residency and operational controls, providing the highest degree of security and autonomy, regardless of scale or complexity," the statement said.

The parties did not disclose the value of the deal.

Antonio Calderon, chief technology officer, NCIA, said the deal would enhance NATO's operational capabilities and safeguard the alliance's digital environment.

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"Partnership with industry is a critical component of our digital transformation strategy. Through this collaboration, we will deliver a secure, resilient and scalable cloud environment for JATEC that meets the highest standards required to protect highly sensitive data," he said.

NATO's Google Cloud deal is far from exclusive. The alliance also has an arrangement with AWS to support a "multi-domain operations-enabled alliance with interoperability, real-time analytics, and data-driven decision making."

Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty has collaborated with the NCIA to validate the compliance of cloud deployments with NATO's D32 directive to protect information in public clouds.

The Google deal with NATO comes amid heightened concerns over cloud sovereignty in Europe. A Gartner survey of CIOs and tech leaders in Western Europe found that 61 percent want to increase their use of local cloud providers amid global geopolitical uncertainty. ®