NATO has stopped accepting submissions of hi-tech projects, including blockchain solutions, for the 2016 Innovation Challenge organised by the Alliance’s Communications and Information Agency (NCI).

The best projects will be awarded participation in the NCI Agency Industry Conference that is going to take place in Tallinn, Estonia from 7 to 9 June. The winners will be chosen by the Agency’s leading specialists, states the organisation’s website. Applications have been accepted until 10 May.

The aim of the event is to foster the search for new technological solutions that would trigger the development of NATO’s C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance).

To take part in the competition, each candidate had to submit a two-page project description. All applications were divided between four focus areas: Cyber defence, Internet of Things, Military applications of blockchains, Cognitive computing and machine learning.

Cyber defence covers the following topics: insider threat detection; situational awareness; secure mobility; Advanced Persistent Threat detection; multi-level security.

In the field of the IoT, NATO is interested in novel applications of the technology for military, logistic, energy efficiency and medical purposes. Also mentioned in the competition programme are data integrity and analysis.

Military applications of blockchain include military logistics, procurement and finance.

The last focus area includes Automatic document classification, autonomous agents supporting defence against cyber-attacks and autonomous agents replacing call centre functions.

At the same time, the Agency emphasises that in each area it will also pay attention to other technological projects that may be of interest in the given context.

More than 500 senior military, government and industry leaders will take part in the conference, as well as security experts. The event is organised by the NCI Agency together with the Association for Communications, Electronics and Information Systems (AFCEA). The programme of the conference will include both the discussion of current NATO tasks and the analysis of the opportunities the Alliance may get from collaboration with the industry, including small innovative firms.

Andrew Levich