The Landscape

Cross-domain solutions operate at the intersection of government security policy, defence procurement, and a specialised vendor market. Understanding who builds CDS, who evaluates them, and where the field is headed provides essential context for anyone working in this space.

This section covers three perspectives on the CDS landscape:

Vendors and Products

The $3.75 billion CDS market -- who the major vendors are, what they sell, how they compare, and the consolidation trends reshaping the industry. Includes product comparison tables for data diodes, guards, CDR, and software CDS.

National Approaches

How different nations organise their CDS ecosystems -- from the Five Eyes nations with mature evaluation frameworks through to recent NATO members still building capability. Covers the NATO-wide policy structure and European approaches.

Academic Research and Open Problems

What researchers are working on and what remains unsolved -- formal verification, machine learning in CDS, cloud-native architectures, and the ten open problems that define the field's future.

For the standards and classification systems that underpin this landscape, see Standards and Classification. For technical details on how CDS products work, see How CDS Works and the Hardware and Software sections.