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Feb 21 2025

NCIA shares knowledge and insight at TIDE Sprint 2025


From 17 to 21 February 2025, experts from the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) participated in TIDE Sprint 2025, hosted by NATO Allied Command Transformation (ACT), in Helsinki, Finland.


TIDE Sprint serves as a collaborative venue where stakeholders from industry, academia, civil society, government and the military, convene to share insights, build knowledge and contribute to collective progress. The 5-day event combines brainstorming, hands-on demonstrations, coding, and testing to help improve NATO and national capabilities in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

NCIA shares knowledge and insight at TIDE Sprint 2025
Image sourced from the NATO Space Centre of Excellence.

More than 20 NCIA experts from different business areas, participated in the event across specialized tracks focusing on interoperability and readiness challenges:

NCIA’s Air Command and Control (AirC2) experts introduced two in-house developed tools, namely the Tracker Evaluation Application and the Grammar Based Test Tool, designed to enhance Command and Control aircraft tracking and evaluate system’s compatibility with established messaging standards. Meanwhile, specialists from the Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) team presented their work role in mission-critical business architecture, using state-of-the-art tools, ensuring practical and accessible solutions for operators.

The NCIA Chief Quality Office (CQO) contributed to the NATO Digital Staff (NDS) briefing on the Alliance Interoperability Dashboard, an NCIA project sponsored by NDS. The tool provides actionable information to facilitate digital interoperability governance and improve NATO-wide operational capability.

In parallel, the NCIA’s Command and Control (C2) team contributed to the NextGen C2 Enabling Service Track, sharing insight on the future of C2 services and an approach to transforming the current NextGen C2 services, presenting enhanced capabilities for better decision-making across NATO

Artificial Intelligence and data-driven innovation were central themes to the event. Experts from the NCIA Chief Technology Office led sessions on responsible AI best practices, its accelerated integration and adoption, and strategies for building a data-centric NATO.

Cybersecurity was another key focus area. The NATO Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) team contributed to discussions on zero trust security, facilitating an understanding of its principles and importance in digital transformation and multi-domain operations among NATO Allies and Partners. “TIDE Sprint provides the opportunity for in-person collaboration, enabling us to achieve greater cyber resilience and readiness across the Alliance, by bringing theory into practice,” explained Tsvetelina Shabanska, Senior Specialist at the NCIA’s NCSC.

NCIA’s NCSC collaborates with ACT concerning emerging and disruptive technologies. Their work includes quantum-safe information sharing, prevention of adversarial artificial intelligence, and quantum key distribution. NCIA specialists form the NATO Integrated Mobile Services Centre (NIMSC) explored NATO-wide. As a collaborative partner to ACT and NDS in 5G related topics, NIMSC focused specifically on 5G standardization across NATO as well as addressing the future of 6G for military applications.

The NATO Infrastructure Services Team, involved in programmes of work with other NATO entities in areas such as federated interoperability, enterprise capability development and cross-domain information sharing, participated in the Zero Trust track, giving a brief on the data pillar of zero trust.

The event enriched NCIA’s engagement with participants by sharing insights, exchanging knowledge, and exploring collaborative opportunities to advance innovative solutions, which will strengthen NATO's operational effectiveness and interoperability.