Mr Brian Christiansen        

NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency
Chief - Capability Area Team 2 – Cyber Defence and Assured Interoperability

Mr Christiansen assumed his current position as Chief CAT2 on 1 November 2008. CAT2 covers a broad spectrum of Information Assurance issues as well as Standards Transformation and Interoperability Validation. Main activities in the portfolio included implementation of NATO Computer Incident Response Capability (NCIRC), cross-domain implementations, and Networked Interoperable Real-time Information Services (NIRIS). A number of these activities are in support of ISAF.
 
From 1980 to 1990 Mr Christiansen worked with the major Danish telecommunications provider. From 1980 to 1985 he specified and implemented large-scale customer databases in the ADP Division. After his graduation in 1985 he moved to the R&D Division specializing in Network Management and international projects (ESPRIT and RACE).

In 1990 he joined SHAPE Technical Centre (STC) where he continued the work in Network Management and was responsible for the introduction of Network Management and Control capabilities for NATO data networks.

After the establishment of NC3A he was part of a deployable team from 1996 to 2001 of specialists that supported NATO operations in Bosnia (SFOR) and Kosovo (KFOR). He was the technical lead in specification and implementation the CIS capabilities for the new SFOR HQ campus when it moved from Ilidza to Butmir (Sarajevo).

From 2001 he was the project manager for Shared Tactical Ground Picture (2001-2005) which was a multinational project experimenting with Service Oriented Architecture and Information Sharing technologies in a heterogeneous coalition environment. This project was a forerunner to NATO Network Enabled Capability and provided substantial input to the specifications hereof.

From 2005 to 2008 he was leader of an Integrated Portfolio Team with the responsibility to ensure coherence among the Agency’s portfolio of projects in the area of NATO Response Force (NRF) and Coalition Interoperability. During this period a test and validation framework was set up that assisted in the interoperability assessment of several NRF Nations.

As of 2008 he was Chief for Capability Area Team 2 (CAT2) with had main responsibility for Interoperability Standards, Interoperability Campaigns, Cross-Domain Solutions, and Friendly Force Tracking. In 2009 the consolidation started with another team (CAT8). The final outcome of this process was the establishment of a new CAT2 (Cyber Defence and Assured Information Sharing). CAT2 is organizationally part of NC3A’s Production segment.

Brian Christiansen is a graduate from Copenhagen University with a Masters in Computer Science, and from Copenhagen Business School with a degree in Financing and, subsequently, in International Trade.