The NCI Agency General Manager, Mr Koen Gijsbers and Director Demand Management, Dr Velizar Shalamanov, travelled to Washington DC 23-26 June to attend meetings with Senior Leadership at the Pentagon. During the visit, Mr Gijsbers met with Acting Chief Information Officer for the US Department of Defense, Mr Terry Halvorsen and with the Executive Director, Mr Gregory L. Garcia, of the U.S. Army Information Technology Agency.
The main topics discussed during the office calls were Cyber Defence, the Federated Mission Networking concept, the NATO-wide IT Modernization project, the NCI Agency Customer Catalogue of Services and the NCI Agency Chief Information Officers' Conference. The objective of these meetings was to strengthen the strategic partnership between the United States and the NCI Agency that contributes to NATO's success in achieving a Ready, Robust and Rebalanced Alliance.
During this visit, Dr Shalamanov also conducted working level meetings with the senior management of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) led by the Vice Principal Director for Operations, Mr Larry Klooster. Opening a dialogue on a future cooperation agreement between DISA and the NCI Agency was one of the main objectives.
Furthermore, Mr Gijsbers led a panel on "Security Cooperation: Building Partner Capacity in Cyberspace" during the AFCEA Cyber Symposium on 24 – 25 June, held in Baltimore. The main intent of this panel was to raise awareness in the public and private sector on the role NATO is playing in Cyber Defence and how NATO is a lever to improve NATO and National Cyber Defence postures. During the panel, Dr Shalamanov presented how the NCI Agency perceives the NATO Cyber Defence Cooperation Platform as a critical enabler in defeating cyber threats in NATO and beyond. He also emphasized the importance of synchronizing the development of the Cooperation Platform with key initiatives from other stakeholders and in line with NATO's Policy on Cyber Defence. For more information on the AFCEA Cyber Symposium, please see the website.
*The NCI Agency is the executive arm of the NATO Communication and Information Organisation (NCIO), which aims to achieve maximum effectiveness in delivering C3 capabilities to stakeholders, while ensuring their coherence and interoperability, and ensuring the provision of secure CIS services at minimum cost to Allies – individually and collectively.