Two of Luxembourg’s long-term objectives, part of the national cyber defense strategy, are: to have available one of the most efficient cybersecurity defenses within NATO and the EU, and also to develop both expertise and competencies so it can support Allies and partners. The accomplishment of these goals require an IT infrastructure that is scalable, reliable, efficient, and secure.
“The LCDC will play a crucial role in the implementation of Luxembourg’s future cyber projects and hence contribute to our strategic goal of building one of the most secure cyber defenses” – François Bausch, Minister of Defence
Luxembourg counts on responding to these challenges through the Luxembourg Cyber Defence Cloud (LCDC), which aims to overall store and treat data from private and highly secure Luxembourgish Defense cloud environments. The project articulates in four major points, being:
- A private cloud environment hosted in Luxembourg
- The possibility of both storing and treating sensitive and classified data
- The capacity of offering scalable calculation and storage solutions, so as to adapt to demand and support future use cases
- Operated with the aid of Luxembourg Defense with NSPA support – contracted for the acquisition, implementation and exploitation parts
Besides, the creation of multi-tenancy environments is planned for the different LCDC users. This is to enable beneficiaries to use the same cloud infrastructure for data storage and treatment, while still assuring that no other beneficiary can access others’ information. LCDC will offer a compatible and interoperable platform, containing different technological solutions from different providers. This multi-cloud approach aims at avoiding the dependence on one and single provider.
Considering the scope of the project as well as the complexity of the IT infrastructure and its management, the LCDC will be operated for the benefit of the Luxembourg Defense with the support of the NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) for the management of the contracts with the various external contractors necessary for the implementation and operation of cloud environments. The NSPA was also tasked upstream by the Directorate of Defense to carry out the proof of concept and to identify the budget required to successfully complete the project.
Also, a dedicated portion of the LCDC will be set up for NSPA purposes. The NSPA in fact already operates a private cloud environment for its own needs, the latter being co-financed by Luxembourg. It is planned to migrate this private cloud environment to the LCDC.
Overall, this new cybersecurity project is principally about contributing to: luxembourgish cyber-resilience to counter cyber threats, common effort at EU/NATO scales, and Luxembourg Defense’s strategic objectives. With a total budget elevating to a maximum of €250.360.323 from 2024 to 2035, the draft bill enables the Directorate of Defence to cover the 12-year project’s costs.
