WIESBADEN, Germany — As cyber threats continue to grow in both complexity and scale, Cyber Summit 25 brought together military leaders, industry experts, and Allied partners this week with a clear goal: work together to stay ahead.
Hosted by U.S. Army Europe and Africa, the three-day summit, held July 22-24, focused on the theme “Collaborative Defense for Data-Driven Decisions.” That message guided every discussion, briefing, and breakout session. This was not just about showcasing new technologies. It was about building trust, improving interoperability, and finding real solutions to shared challenges.
“We bring people from industry, bring people from the United States, bring people from our sister services, bring partners, bring allies together to collaborate and discuss TTPs, discuss challenges,” said Holvin Galindo, USAREUR-AF’s director of cybersecurity. “That’s the one takeaway right there. And that’s what we strive for here.”
Galindo said AI and machine learning are key tools in making sense of massive volumes of cyber data.
“AI can advance the analytics of all that, especially when we look at big data, storage areas, and then how to crunch all that, and how to find that needle in the haystack that's really going to help us defend ourselves and protect our system, protect our data,” said Galindo.
He also emphasized the need for collective improvement and modernization, insisting on the need to take advantage of collaboration opportunities to help improve security.
U.S. Army Col. Edward Kendall, chief information officer with USAREUR-AF, said the summit plays a key role in building the relationships needed for secure and reliable operations.
“This summit is ultimately about building and establishing partnerships because at the end of the day cybersecurity, cyber defense and the whole cyber domain relies on all of us to come together as a collective team,” said Kendall. “It's all about access to the data, securing the data, reliability of data and then how do we enable that across multiple domains and at echelon and speed so our commanders can make decisions.”
Kendall pointed to the importance of commercial innovation in supporting military cyber needs.
“Our partnership with industry is critical. They're able to innovate and leverage advanced technology faster than the military could,” he said. “So, our ability to articulate what our requirement is, articulate what our gaps and what we need to do so they can go out and innovate at speed and leverage what they've done in the civilian industry and bring that to the Army at speed and scale is absolutely critical.”
He also highlighted training and workforce development as essential to maintaining a cyber advantage.
“Events like this where you can do information sharing, you can take the lessons learned from others and then put that back into our training pipeline,” said Kendall.
More than 50 sessions took place during the event. Topics included secure messaging, artificial intelligence integration, cloud security, and incident response planning. The summit also featured hands-on labs and technical discussions, giving participants a chance to test capabilities and talk through real-world scenarios.
With attendees joining from across the globe both in person and online, Cyber Summit 25 reinforced a simple but important point. Cybersecurity is not a one-nation fight. It requires shared understanding, shared tools, and shared responsibility.
Social Sharing