At WEST 2026, U.S. naval and joint leaders sent a blunt message: in the next fight, insecure data paths and brittle cyber defenses will lose missions. Senior leaders cast this as a “moment of consequence,” warning that the U.S. is now competing on speed, scale, and execution—and that lagging on secure, multi‑domain connectivity is no longer a theoretical risk, it’s an operational one. The through‑line across keynotes and side sessions was urgency: integrate with allies faster, harden digital infrastructure end‑to‑end, and turn advanced technologies into real warfighting advantage before an adversary exploits the seams. Against that backdrop, five cyber trends stood out at WEST 2026 that should be driving how agencies are designing, funding, and hardening mission networks. 

“Because today, we face a moment of consequence. In American history, there are inflection points—moments when industrial strength and national security stop being abstract concepts and become hard requirements.”
– Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan, WEST 2026 remarks

Secure Multi‑Domain and Coalition Data Sharing  

A dominant theme at WEST 2026 was the need to share information securely across classification levels and with allies, especially in the Indo‑Pacific, where China’s growing military reach and operational tempo are forcing the U.S. and partners to operate farther forward, faster, and more jointly. During a panel session, senior officers from across the Five Eyes nations laid out what real interoperability will require, emphasizing that preparing for conflict with China depends on deeper interoperability and faster, more reliable information sharing among partners. And as Adm. Daryl Caudle, Chief of Naval Operations, underscored, ‘this is a critical era of Great Power Competition,’ a reminder that America’s network of allies only becomes a true asymmetric advantage if the data that connects them is trustworthy and timely. If coalition data flows are slow, manual, or insecure, the U.S. will lose tempo and expose high‑value networks to avoidable risk. 

Take the next step with Owl: Our high‑assurance cross domain platform, XD Vision, enables fast, trusted multi‑domain collaboration with allies—without backchannels, blind trust, or manual workarounds; discover more in our brief.

Continuous Cyber Readiness  

Leaders at WEST pushed hard on moving from episodic, checklist‑driven cybersecurity to continuous readiness, where cyber status sits alongside operational status and commanders know in real time whether mission systems, cross‑domain boundaries, and OT segments are defensible—not just that they passed an inspection months ago—by instrumenting high‑consequence terrain for continuous telemetry, feeding it into operational dashboards, and using that live picture to drive daily decisions instead of relying on stale ATO paperwork. 

Take the next step with Owl: See how we can help your agency turn continuous cyber readiness into a working architecture you can defend by centralizing SIEM visibility across segregated domains while meeting Raise the Bar and CSfC requirements in our brief. 

 Zero Trust as an Architecture Mandate 

Zero trust has been a talking point for years, but at WEST 2026 it stopped being a slogan and became marching orders. Program offices were told plainly that future systems must assume the network is hostile, enforce least privilege everywhere, and eliminate implicit trust between enclaves and domains—an emphasis echoed in DON CIO and AFCEA/SIGNAL coverage of digital warfighting sessions. Any cross‑domain path that still behaves like a “big pipe” is now a liability, not an asset, and will be treated that way in design reviews and threat assessments. 

Take the next step with Owl: Owl’s cross domain solutions put zero trust into practice at the boundary, treating every external network as hostile and tightly controlling what can cross. To see how CDS fits into your ZTX roadmap, watch our recent webinar, “A Comprehensive Framework for Zero Trust & Cross Domain Security.”

AI‑Enabled Defense with Risk Scrutiny 

AI was everywhere around WEST—both as a promised force multiplier and as a new attack surface. Navy leaders, echoing CNO guidance that AI must be embedded into core naval functions rather than treated as an experiment, talked about using it to accelerate detection, correlation, and decision support in future fights. At the same time, DON leadership has been clear that AI must be trusted and governed, with guardrails and responsible‑use policies to prevent hidden behaviors, exfiltration paths, or subtle integrity risks in opaque systems. Department of the Navy Chief Data and AI Officer & CIO Stuart Wagner underscored that AI is changing the speed of our ability to learn from data, and that this acceleration will change the character of war by expediting data‑driven effects across many functions—even as humans increasingly shift to being “on the loop” to supervise more automated kill chains and decision flows. 

Take the next step with Owl: As AI races into every mission thread, uncontained models can become your biggest attack surface—read our recent blog to see how AI containment lets agencies box in powerful, probabilistic systems behind hard boundaries and inspected ‘drawbridges’.

Securing installations and OT for readiness 

WEST 2026 drove home that OT is no longer “back‑office” plumbing; it’s a frontline target where adversaries will go to stop the fleet from moving. Power, fueling, munitions handling, pier‑side services, and other base functions all run on aging industrial control systems that were never designed for today’s threat environment. WEST’s broader focus on sustaining maritime dominance and warfighting readiness implicitly tied base, installation, and ICS security to the ability to generate and sustain combat power. Conversations around rugged edge compute and “impenetrable physical and data security” for the interconnected battlespace reinforced that hardening bases, shipyards, and OT at the tactical edge is no longer just facility security—it is mission‑generation security and fleet readiness by another name. 

Take the next step with Owl: When OT becomes contested, defenses must assume compromise and contain it. Owl’s U.S. Government‑validated protocol‑filtering diodes create hardware‑enforced drawbridges that safely move data off critical OT while guaranteeing nothing—malware, commands, or misconfigurations—can get back in. Learn more about Owl Talon here. 

Where WEST 2026 Points Next 

As WEST 2026 made clear, the next maritime fight will be won or lost on how quickly and safely commanders can move data across domains, enclaves, and oceans. Secure multi‑domain sharing, zero trust, continuous cyber readiness, AI containment, and hardened OT are no longer “future goals” but immediate design constraints for every new program and modernization effort.  

Owl Cyber Defense has been supporting our defense & intel customers implement these principles at scale—from high‑assurance cross domain solutions for coalition operations to protocol‑filtering data diodes that lock down critical OT. If you’re ready to align your architectures to what fleet and U.S. Navy leaders are demanding after WEST, contact our team to schedule a mission‑focused design session or technical workshop.