Key takeaways
- Cyber resilience for defence and government organisations increasingly depends on who controls the infrastructure underneath applications and platforms
- Each additional handoff between networks introduces another commercial, operational and security dependency
- TechNet Cyber’s 2026 theme, Dominating the Digital Battlespace: Confidence, Speed, Precision, reflects this shift
- The strongest connectivity strategies will be built around presence, partnership and performance
- EXA Infrastructure’s footprint spans more than 170,000km across 37 countries, including nine transatlantic routes and 22 cable landing stations
A shift in cyber resilience thinking
“Confidence, Speed, Precision” reflects a major shift in how defence and government organisations are thinking about cyber resilience. For years, cyber strategy has focused heavily on applications, endpoints and platforms. Increasingly, however, resilience also depends on something more fundamental: who controls the infrastructure underneath. That means the routes data travels, the number of handoffs involved, and the visibility organisations retain across international networks.
Every handoff adds a dependency
As organisations connect more sites, clouds, data centres and operational environments, the route between two points can become harder to see and harder to control. Each additional handoff introduces another commercial, operational and security dependency. For defence, government and critical industries, resilience is therefore not just about whether capacity exists. It is about how that capacity is delivered, who controls each segment, and how much visibility the customer has across the full path.
TechNet Cyber 2026 and the digital battlespace
That makes infrastructure control a timely cyber resilience issue, rather than a purely telecoms or networking concern. TechNet Cyber’s 2026 theme (Dominating the Digital Battlespace: Confidence, Speed, Precision) reflects a wider shift in how defence and government organisations are thinking about digital operations: not simply as systems to be protected, but as environments that need to perform reliably under sustained pressure.
Confidence, speed and precision in connectivity
In this context, trusted connectivity is becoming part of the resilience equation. Confidence increasingly also depends on knowing that critical routes are built on infrastructure that can be understood and controlled. Speed depends on having high-capacity, low-latency connectivity available across the corridors where operational demand is growing. Precision depends on being able to move data predictably, with fewer unknowns in the delivery chain.
What confidence, speed and precision depend on
- Confidence: knowing critical routes are built on infrastructure that can be understood and controlled
- Speed: high-capacity, low-latency connectivity across the corridors where operational demand is growing
- Precision: moving data predictably, with fewer unknowns in the delivery chain
Presence, partnership and performance
For defence, government and critical industries, the strongest connectivity strategies will increasingly be built around ‘presence, partnership and performance’. Presence ensures infrastructure reaches the locations and corridors that matter. Partnership reduces complexity by giving organisations clearer accountability across the delivery chain. Performance ensures the network can support critical operations consistently, even as demand increases.
EXA Infrastructure’s role
EXA Infrastructure’s role in this landscape is to provide the infrastructure foundation behind that confidence. Following its acquisition of Aqua Comms, EXA has strengthened its transatlantic and intra-European connectivity network, adding greater route diversity and critical links between the US, Ireland and mainland Europe. Its wider footprint now spans more than 170,000km of digital infrastructure across 37 countries, including nine transatlantic routes and 22 cable landing stations across North America and Europe.
