On 7 December 2015, the NCI Agency General Manager, Mr Koen Gijsbers and Director Infrastructure Services (DIS), Dr Gregory Edwards met with the Bulgarian Permanent Undersecretary of Defence, Dr Dobromir Totev and Deputy Chief of Defence LTGEN Constantin Popov. The visit, which was part of a four day trip to Bulgaria, provided an opportunity to discuss progress on Bulgaria's implementation of its NATO 2020 vision and NCI Agency support to the Bulgarian NATO Force Integration Unit (NFIU).
Another important topic discussed at the meeting was Cyber Defence, for which the Deputy Director of CIS Directorate, COL Lyudmil Stoyanov, and the Head of Department CIS Directorate, COL Petyo Petrov were present.
Other subjects covered bilateral cooperation in the provision of Broadcast, Maritime Rear Link and Ship Shore (BRASS), ACCS Software Based Elements (ASBE), core and functional software services, and the ongoing Radars Feasibility Study.
This meeting was another event in the longstanding good cooperation between Bulgaria and the NCI Agency, which is underpinned by a Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Memorandum of Understanding, signed in 2010 and extended on 27 March 2015 for another five years.
After the meeting at the Ministry of Defence, the General Manager and Director Infrastructure Services went on to speak at the AFCEA International Cyber Symposium held from 8-10 December in Sofia.