Last month Cisco was thrilled to participate in the Department of Defense (DoD) Trident Spectre 2016 annual exercise conducted at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, VA. Trident Spectre is an annual event for special operations, intelligence, interagency, and law-enforcement personnel to test and evaluate emerging technologies both from government and commercial industries in tactically-focused scenarios.

During this year's event, we demonstrated our Next-Generation Encryption (NGE) technology as part of a secure classified mobile solution. Cisco partnered with Optio Labs and Sonim Technologies to create a secure mobile solution that gives soldiers real-time access to mission critical data such as high definition drone feeds. On-demand secure video feeds from military drones are transmitted to a Sonim Secure XP7 handset with security by OptioCore embedded into the device. Then, Cisco's NGE technology not only makes sure the device stays secure, but it also enables administrators to manage policies and provides access to the mobile handsets remotely from private networks, private clouds, and even the public cloud.

Additionally, Cisco AnyConnect VPN was included to extend secure communications to the tactical edge. This enables remote, on-the-move users to have constant access for real-time communications, leveraging chat, voice, and video while utilizing a variety of last-mile connectivity options.

Cisco's NGE solution enables soldiers to obtain secure, real-time information, creating increased situational awareness to help make informed yet fast decisions on the battlefield. The ability for administrators to access mobile devices through multiple secure platforms gives the DoD and our soldiers the flexibility they need to carry out their missions successfully, no matter what.

This is truly a unique offering in that it offers defense-grade security on the world's most rugged device, and Trident Spectre was a great opportunity to demonstrate these unique capabilities for soldiers operating in constrained environments. We're looking forward to next year's event already!