NATO Information Exchange Gateways - Reference Architecture

Today's climate of coalition based operations and network enabled capability (NEC) means that there is a growing requirement for exchange of information between security and management domains.

NATO has defined the concept of an Information Exchange Gateway (IEG) to facilitate secure communication between different security and management domains. The IEG is designed to provide a standard and secure method of communication between NATO, NATO nations, non-NATO nations, coalition forces, Non Government Organisations (NGOs), and other international organisations (IOs).

The need to ensure information assurance, namely confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, has led to an IEG architecture which makes use of:

• Well-defined, limited and symmetrical interfaces
• A minimised number of standard protocols