Securing Next-Generation Defense by Design

June 2026, Daryl Flack, Partner

Published on: EE Times

Europe’s defense landscape is being forced to recalibrate in response to a shifting global order defined by geopolitical instability, volatility, and the increasingly unpredictable nature of hybrid warfare, all of which are straining interconnected supply chains.

Europe is no longer defined by its ability to build ever more advanced military capabilities. That is no longer the differentiator. The real test now is whether those capabilities can be kept secure, resilient, sovereign, and operational in a geopolitical environment that is becoming more volatile and less predictable by the day.

Traditional approaches are struggling to keep pace with the speed and complexity of modern threats. State-backed actors, cybercriminal groups, hacktivists, and proxy organizations increasingly operate in blurred spaces between peace and conflict. Defense systems are now deeply interconnected with cloud platforms, AI models, software supply chains, telecommunications infrastructure, and globally sourced components.

In this environment, security must be embedded into defense ecosystems from the outset.

Securing autonomous defense systems

AI is rapidly becoming central to next-generation defense capability. Autonomous drones, sensor fusion platforms, predictive logistics, cyber-defense tooling, intelligence analysis, electronic warfare, and battlefield decision-support systems increasingly rely on machine learning and AI-driven automation.

But the same technologies enabling military advantage also create entirely new attack

surfaces.

Adversaries are now operating at AI speed. Automated reconnaissance, AI-enhanced phishing, autonomous vulnerability discovery, synthetic identities, and machine-driven disinformation campaigns are dramatically compressing the timeline between attack development and operational impact.

Autonomous defense systems cannot simply have AI functionality added to them while security is bolted on afterwards. Security must be architected into the entire lifecycle of the platform, from model training and software development to deployment, maintenance, supply chain assurance, and operational use.

This means adopting “AI by design” principles.

The U.K. National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC’s) “Guidelines for Secure AI System

Development” reinforce this approach, emphasizing that AI security must be embedded across secure design, development, deployment, and operational maintenance. The guidance highlights the need for threat modeling, secure supply chains, least-privilege access controls, protection against data poisoning and model compromise, secure-by-default deployment, continuous monitoring, and robust incident-response procedures for AI-enabled systems.

At a defense level, this includes securing training data against poisoning attacks, validating

model integrity, ensuring explainability in critical operational environments, implementing

zero-trust architectures, and continuously monitoring for anomalous system behavior. This

aligns with wider international frameworks, including the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and ISO/IEC 42001 AI governance standards.

Physical and hybrid resilience

Too often, cybersecurity, operational technology, and physical protection are treated as separate domains. Modern defense environments no longer allow for that separation.

Hybrid threats increasingly blend digital intrusion with physical disruption. Attacks on

operational technology, logistics hubs, defense suppliers, transport networks, and energy infrastructure show that modern conflict operates seamlessly across physical and digital layers.

This is why resilience must extend beyond software into the physical domain. Defense organizations need hybrid protection models that integrate cyber resilience, operational continuity, supply chain assurance, and physical security under a unified governance structure.

GCAP: Opportunity and complexity in defense supply chains

The Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) is a case in point of how next-generation defense

capability is being developed, highlighting both the deep interdependence of global supply chains and the shift toward collaborative innovation driven by strategic necessity.

Bringing together Japan, Italy, and the U.K., the program is developing a sixth-generation

stealth fighter expected to enter service by 2035. It unites the U.K.-led Tempest initiative

with Japan’s F-X program and is set to replace the Eurofighter Typhoon and Mitsubishi F-2.

GCAP reflects the future of defense collaboration: multinational, digitally integrated,

software-defined, and reliant on highly specialized industrial ecosystems.

The aircraft will depend on thousands of suppliers delivering advanced electronics,

sensors, AI-enabled systems, communications technologies, software, propulsion, and operational support infrastructure.

This creates significant opportunities for innovation and collaboration but also

introduces material cyber and operational risk. Adversaries have consistently exploited

weaker links in supply chains rather than confronting hardened core systems directly.

GCAP illustrates why “secure-by-design” principles must extend across the entire

industrial ecosystem, not just the final platform. That requires embedding security into

procurement, supplier governance, software development, operational technology, and

physical infrastructure while recognizing that resilience must span every layer, from

semiconductor fabrication and software libraries to logistics and maintenance

operations.

Geopolitical risk constantly changes shape

One of the greatest mistakes that organizations can make is treating geopolitical risk as

static. Geopolitical risk evolves continuously because adversaries evolve continuously.

Motivations shift, alliances change, technologies mature, criminal ecosystems adapt, and

global conflicts create entirely new operational environments.

The nature of cyberthreats today looks fundamentally different from even five years ago.

Historically, organizations often viewed cyberthreats through relatively clear categories: cybercrime, espionage, insiders, security researchers, hacktivism, or state-backed

activity. Those distinctions are now increasingly blurred.

Modern geopolitical risk operates in gray zones where criminal groups, proxy actors,

ideological movements, and nation-states overlap, cooperate, tolerate one another, or

exploit the same attack ecosystems.

Iran-linked activity demonstrates this clearly. Campaigns such as MuddyWater’s use

of ransomware as a decoy to mask espionage and operational disruption illustrate how attackers are adapting techniques traditionally associated with cybercrime to support

broader geopolitical objectives.

Attackers increasingly understand that they do not always need highly sophisticated

capabilities to create a strategic impact. In periods of geopolitical instability, relatively

unsophisticated techniques, including distributed denial-of-service attacks, phishing

campaigns, credential theft, website defacement, and exploitation of exposed services,

can generate disproportionate operational disruption.

This creates a far more unpredictable risk landscape.

North Korea demonstrates another important evolution in geopolitical cyber

risk: monetization. Unlike traditional, espionage-focused operations, North Korean

cyberactivity increasingly blends state objectives with large-scale financial theft.

The theft of hundreds of millions of dollars linked to the $1.5 billion ByBit cryptocurrency

hack demonstrates how cyber operations can simultaneously fund state objectives,

evade sanctions, and destabilize financial ecosystems.

Cyberthreats evolve when adversaries need them to evolve. Some actors seek intelligence

collection. Others seek operational disruption. Others seek financial gain. Increasingly,

many pursue all three simultaneously.

The challenge for defense organizations is that future threats are unlikely to resemble

past ones exactly. Adversaries continuously adapt to defensive controls, exploit emerging

technologies, identify weak points in supply chains, and capitalize on political instability.

This is why complacency is one of the greatest strategic cyber risks. Resilience

hinges on an organization’s capability to adapt to unknown and constantly evolving

forms of disruption.

The seven steps of resilience by design

Passive defense is no longer enough. The future of defense resilience lies not in assuming breaches can always be prevented but in ensuring organizations can continue operating, adapt under pressure, and recover rapidly when attacks occur. This is the foundation of “resilience by design”:

• Identify critical assets and services.

Defense organizations must understand which systems, services, and operational functions are truly mission-critical. Without this visibility, prioritization becomes impossible.

• Understand how systems can fail.

Modern defense ecosystems are deeply interconnected. Organizations must assess dependencies across suppliers, cloud services, operational technology, communications infrastructure, and software environments to understand how disruption may propagate.

• Embed security from the outset.

Security and resilience must be designed into systems from the beginning, not retrofitted later. This includes secure-by-design engineering, zero-trust architectures, proactive monitoring, and continuous validation.

• Build a cyber-aware operational culture.

Technology alone cannot deliver resilience. Personnel across defense eco-systems must understand modern threat landscapes, operational impacts, and their role in reducing risk.

• Prepare to respond and recover.

Defense organizations must assume incidents will occur. Response plans, playbooks, tabletop and live exercises, operational continuity testing, and recovery validation should become routine.

• Continuously improve.

Threat landscapes evolve constantly. Organizations must learn from incidents, exercises,

intelligence sharing, and near-misses to continuously refine resilience strategies.

• Strengthen governance and indepen￾dent assurance.

Resilience requires accountability. Independent assessments against recognized frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27001, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, and the U.K. NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework help ensure resilience remains an operational priority

rather than a compliance exercise. For defense, this is reinforced by mission-specific standards and controls, including U.K. Ministry of Defense JSP 440, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Risk Management Framework and DoD 5200.01 for information security, and Australia’s Information Security Manual.

Combined, these frameworks provide structured assurance across governance, system accreditation, and operational security in high-consequence defense environments.

Security must become a strategic design principle

In an era shaped by hybrid conflict, AI acceleration, and fragile global interdependence,

security, discipline, and resilience must be woven together by design.

The operating reality is constant change.

Threats evolve, shift, and reconfigure at speed, demanding that organizations remain

on their guard, continuously alert to patterns that are never fixed and risks that rarely

announce themselves.