Defence Air-Gaps: Overcoming the Complexities With WAN Acceleration

All organisations – public and private - are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. This includes governments and those working in defence, either on the battlefield or within defence manufacturing, research and development. NATO says the threats are increasingly complex, destructive, coercive and they are occurring more frequently than ever before. The Alliance has therefore placed cyber-defence and deterrence at the centre of its strategy to protect its networks, operations and relationships. 

However, in May 2024, SC Magazine reported that the UK’s Ministry of Defence had suffered a cyber-attack that caused a payroll data breach. The Guardian suggested that it subsequently jeopardised current and past members of the UK’s armed forces, as it included their names and bank details; it also involved a third-party payroll system with China being blamed for the attack. 

400% rise in MoD data breaches

In fact, a report by the i Newspaper claimed that there has been a ‘400% rise in MoD data breaches, [which] fuels fear of a cyber threat from Russia and China.’ The Centre for Emerging Technology and Security points out that it’s not just the MOD and the UK that has to be vigilant and proactive in defending itself against cyber-threats. The US does, too, and also lays the blame of data theft on threat actors involved with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):

“The impact on US national security and intelligence capability has been severe and enduring. Substantial open-source material illustrates the success that the CCP’s protracted campaign of data theft has had against the US. CCP-backed hacking groups have successfully stolen sensitive technology, military plans, blueprints and trade secrets, coupled with vast volumes of sensitive data on the entire American population.”

It adds that the data stolen from the MOD in the UK “holds immense value for hostile regimes.” For example, it could be used for human intelligence targeting operations to identify personnel involved in defence and military operations, or to target financially vulnerable individuals as part of human intelligence targeting operations. Stolen data could be used to influence operations and for propaganda purposes, put lives at risk or to attack defence manufacturers and suppliers. 

Air-gapping sensitive data

To protect the most sensitive data, the solution has often been to create an air-gap by storing the data offline, making it harder for threat actors – unless they gain the access to the technology from within an organisation that’s using this strategy – to steal data or to corrupt it from afar. This is particularly noteworthy at a time when there is growing concern that cyber-attacks are increasing on military, public sector, commercial and industrial cloud infrastructure. One cause for the heightened threat is the Indo-Russia-Ukraine War, where technology is at the forefront of each battlefield. 

However, while they are often crucial for military operations because of the high security demands of classified information and operations, airgaps aren’t immune to data breaches. Firstly, threat actors may work within the walls of a target organisation as an employee. Nevertheless, cyber-security firm SentinelOne points out that the US Department of Defense air-gaps its networks for its classified systems to protect sensitive information from potential breaches and hacking attempts. Air-gaps can also prevent cyber-espionage. 

Even when data is air-gapped, it often needs to be re-connected to a Wide Area Network (WAN) for the purposes of moving the data and backing it up between different locations over long distances. This raises a few other issues, such as latency which increases the further away the data needs to be transmitted, packet loss, and poor bandwidth utilisation – which can reduce the speed at which data is transferred and received. 

Deploy WAN Acceleration

When it comes to Big Data analysis for Command and Control, as it’s not just about backing up data - it can make the difference between accurate and timely decision-making for successful campaigns - or failure. So, even with the increasing use of SD-WANs in defence and military operations, as well as by government departments and associated organisations, the answer must be WAN Acceleration. 

Unlike WAN Optimisation, which can’t handle encrypted data in flight, WAN Acceleration can keep previously encrypted data secure in transit and send it over a WAN up to 200 times faster by mitigating the effects of latency and packet loss. It can then permit airgaps to be restored once the data is at rest at the desired back-up location. 

Defence ‘service continuity’

The fact that backups can be achieved rapidly and data can be restored fast, which means that even if defence-related systems are compromised, it’s possible to maintain service continuity and to ensure that disaster recovery can be executed to maintain operations; and to protect communications and defence supply chains, while obfuscating cyber-threat actors who might otherwise be able to divert or access sensitive data remotely. 

Even when threat actors use artificial intelligence to initiate cyber-attacks, WAN Acceleration’s AI, machine learning and data parallelisation can play a positive role by overcoming the complexities of latency, packet loss, and air-gapping of the data. It can help to protect the most sensitive data too – no matter what it is – while helping to achieve desired outcomes.