Master’s Thesis: Connected Defence — Next-Generation Data Platform for Military Intelligence and Operations

This thesis designs and evaluates a cloud-native data platform for defence and intelligence organisations operating in secure, sovereign or coalition environments. The platform targets mission-critical workloads with strict confidentiality and integrity requirements and integrates Confidential Computing techniques, remote attestation and end-to-end integrity protection. A modular microservice architecture, zero-trust principles and policy-driven data flows are combined with auditability and provenance tracking to meet compliance demands in NATO-aligned settings. The work analyses operational constraints, threat models and interoperability requirements and presents a reference implementation with automated deployment, attestation pipeline and governance controls. Results show that the platform can preserve data sovereignty and verifiability while sustaining operational tempo, providing a pragmatic blueprint for connected defence missions.

University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Department of Computer Science, Institute for Software Technology