Today, IBM signed a contract with the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) to help strengthen the Alliance's cybersecurity posture with improved security visibility and asset management across all NATO enterprise networks. Starting in January 2024, IBM Consulting Cybersecurity Services will be delivering a custom-made, performance-based Asset, Configuration, Patching and Vulnerability (ACPV) Management Service to the Alliance.

Following NATO's new dynamic and competitive procurement process - featuring regular workshops, sprints and continuous communication with industry - the NCI Agency selected IBM as the organization to deliver on NATO's needs, leaning on IBM's global security footprint and expertise in securing complex infrastructure and widely dispersed environments.

As part of the agreement, IBM Consulting

will build a customized solution that provides a unified view of NATO's security posture. The company will deploy data analysis, asset discovery, integrations, and security experts to provide a consolidated 'single source of truth' on information about assets, configurations, vulnerabilities, and patches across NATO. This will improve the Alliance's visibility into cyber risks and empower it to manage potential issues with more ease and speed across its network. Cybersecurity functions across the NATO Enterprise will be able to use IBM Consulting's ACPV service as the interface to access and dynamically query asset and configuration data, with a special focus on vulnerability management.

"Collaboration with industry is essential to enhance our collective cyber resilience and respond more quickly to cyber threats and vulnerabilities," said Ludwig Decamps, NCI Agency General Manager. "Today's agreement marks a significant milestone in a newly enhanced procurement process, enabling more agile and faster approaches to complex sourcing to deliver solutions that help strengthen the Alliance's cybersecurity posture," Decamps added.

This new service will be built on top of the existing asset, configuration, and patching solutions across NATO. Additionally, the service will help in creating an enterprise framework that will eventually support the needs of other key functional areas, such as IT service management and finance and auditing departments, which rely on asset configuration, and patch management information through a federated approach. 

"Amid today's growing geopolitical tensions globally, NATO's security readiness is more important than ever. It is essential to ensure IT assets and infrastructure are properly maintained, regularly updated, and effectively secured in order to defend against rapidly increasing cyber threats. At IBM, we are proud to be able to provide our vast and deep experience in threat management to help NATO strengthen its security posture," said Mohamad Ali, Chief Operating Officer of IBM Consulting.

About IBM Consulting

IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry and business expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become a trusted partner to the world's most innovative and valuable companies, helping them modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven co-creation method, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes. As the only major global systems integrator inside a technology company, we don't just advise -- we invent and build what's next together with our clients.