By Douglas Norton, Defense Opinion Writer.
The modern battlespace is no longer confined within physical borders. Today, it is defined by data flowing across numerous national boundaries and from beneath the sea to the vacuum of space.
Across the Department of Defense, the intelligence community and federal national security agencies, digital transformation is reshaping how missions are executed. Cloud migration, distributed operations, coalition warfare and artificial intelligence-enabled decision-making are redefining operational tempo. The volume, velocity and value of data have increased exponentially as defense organizations modernize, but so have the risks.
Each year, Everfox surveys security leaders and IT decision-makers across government, defense and intelligence organizations to understand how they are navigating these pressures. The latest results, compiled into our CYBER360 report, point to three urgent realities for defense and military leaders.
Battlefield data sharing faces numerous risks
First, cyber threat activity is rapidly escalating, with cyberattacks against federal agencies accelerating at an alarming rate. Survey respondents reported a 25% year-over-year surge in cyberattacks in 2025.
This is not simply an increase in nuisance-level activity. Nation-state adversaries and sophisticated threat actors are targeting mission systems, logistics platforms, communications infrastructure and intelligence repositories. As operations become more data-driven, the attack surface expands. Every data exchange and cross-network transfer represents both mission value and potential vulnerability.
Second, legacy infrastructure is undermining modern missions. Defense organizations are grappling with outdated IT environments that were never designed for today’s interconnected, multi-domain operations.
Nearly 80% of survey respondents cited outdated infrastructure as a primary source of cyber vulnerability. More than half (53%) reported that their agencies still rely on manual processes for transferring data between environments.
Manual transfers, legacy systems and brittle integrations are incompatible with the speed required in modern operations. When commanders require real-time intelligence across multiple domains and classification levels, manual workflows introduce delay and risk. Worse, they create opportunities for error and compromise. Today’s digital battlespace demands automated, policy-enforced, high-speed data movement that preserves security without slowing operations.
Third, mission partner collaboration is increasingly essential, but coalition and interagency information sharing today faces numerous impediments. More than 80% of respondents agreed that sharing data across networks heightens their risk exposure. A similar percentage acknowledged that balancing data sovereignty requirements with coalition information-sharing needs remains an ongoing challenge.
Yet coalition interoperability is not optional. Initiatives such as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) and NATO’s Data Strategy for the Alliance depend on seamless, secure data flows across classification levels and national boundaries.
Defense organizations must simultaneously protect sensitive networks and information, comply with sovereignty requirements and enable trusted partners to act on shared intelligence. That balancing act has become one of the defining cybersecurity challenges of today’s battlespace.
Zero trust is important but not sufficient
The Pentagon’s push toward zero trust architecture (ZTA), a security framework that requires every user, device and application to continuously verify their identity and permissions, is a critical step forward toward securing vital systems. Defense agencies have made meaningful progress in identity validation, access control and continuous monitoring.
However, the principle of zero trust today must extend beyond mere user authentication if applied to force and coalition interoperability. It must treat all incoming and outgoing data as untrusted until verified. Survey respondents underscored the difficulty of operationalizing this principle: two-thirds cited secure data movement between networks or domains as the greatest barrier to their zero trust strategies.
Today’s battlespace realities demand more from ZTA than it alone can provide to enable secure data sharing for coalition operations when every second matters. Zero trust is essential, but zero trust alone does not solve the challenge of secure interoperability.
Securing the modern battlespace requires a pivot from network-centric to data-centric thinking. Defense organizations must adopt a cybersecurity framework that protects both the network and the data itself, ensuring that information remains secure wherever it travels and wherever it resides.
The solution: a cybersecurity triad
Zero trust architecture provides identity assurance and continuous validation at the network level. Progress toward full zero trust implementation should continue and accelerate.
Data-centric security protects the data itself through tagging, policy enforcement and persistent controls that travel with the information. Nearly 90% of survey respondents reported that their agencies are already implementing data-centric approaches. This ensures that even when data crosses network boundaries, sovereignty requirements remain intact.
Cross domain solutions (CDS) serve as the secure bridge between mission partner networks of differing domains and classification levels. Today’s high-speed commercial off-the-shelf CDS platforms are no longer the bespoke, cumbersome systems of the past. They are flexible, scalable and capable of enabling automated, policy-driven data flows at operational tempo.
When integrated, these three components allow agencies to protect their own networks while securely sharing and accessing trusted data among mission partners. The result is not just stronger cybersecurity, but faster, more informed battlefield decision-making.
Tomorrow’s conflicts will be won by the force that can collect, process, analyze and act on trusted data faster than its adversaries. Secure interoperability across services, agencies and allied nations is the foundation to achieving mission success at the speed of information relevance.
Douglas Norton is vice president of customer engineering solutions at Everfox based in Herndon, Virginia.
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