Strengthening the cyber defence of NATO allies.
The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) strengthens the cyber defence of member nations, allies and partners. Each year it runs two major exercises, Locked Shields and Crossed Swords.
Locked Shields puts defenders under a simulated large-scale attack on national IT systems and critical infrastructure. Crossed Swords trains command, legal and joint cyber-kinetic operations for full-spectrum cyber operations.
Sensitive intelligence, thousands of users, no delays.
Exercise traffic includes threat intelligence, simulated attacks, vulnerabilities and adversary tactics. CCDCOE needed a self-hosted platform with end-to-end encryption and strong data protection controls.
With 4,000 to 5,000 experts from 40+ nations every year, it also needed a platform that scales under a flood of messages without adding latency.
“When considering the optimal solution to support our needs, we looked for robust security features such as end-to-end encryption, the ability to remotely log out of devices, and on-premise deployment.”
The main platform for every exercise.
Rocket.Chat is the primary communication platform during the exercises, between participants and organisers.
- Remote log-out of any device from one central view, so an unattended session never leaks information
- End-to-end encryption, so only the intended recipients can read a message
- On-premises deployment for complete ownership and control of exercise data
- Microservices that scale up and down in real time, without added latency
- Active Directory integration to provision thousands of users into the right channels
- Topic channels created and archived as the exercise moves
“For us, the flexibility of Rocket.Chat being able to scale up and down for our specific needs has been very important.”
4,000 participants. One secure platform.
Confidential by design
End-to-end encryption and on-premises hosting keep exercise data private.
Scale on demand
Thousands of concurrent users with no drop in performance.
Fast onboarding
An intuitive interface and AD provisioning get participants working quickly.
Real-time response
Defending teams share findings instantly across channels and threads.
“Locked Shields brought together 4,000 participants, and all of the exercise teams used Rocket.Chat for immediate communication throughout the planning and execution process.”
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