David Trossell, CEO & CTO of Bridgeworks speaks to European Security & Defence about the growing importance of mission-critical data transfer.
September 16, 2025
With an expertise in optimising data performance that stretches back over 40 years, Hampshire-headquartered Bridgeworks is looking for its artificial intelligence (AI)-enhanced data transmission technology to provide Western armed and security forces with true decision advantage. The speed and assurance with which data can be transferred in a military context has long been recognised as vital to mission success.
This point has been recently emphasised, for example, by Lieutenant General Paul T Stanton, commander of the US Joint Force Headquarters – Department of Defense Information Network and director of the US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). Addressing DISA’s Forecast to Industry event in October 2024, for example, Gen Stanton stated, “When we give US commanders decision space, we will fight and win. Making a better and faster decision than our enemies is central to how we execute.”
Bridgeworks, which already has a presence in the US national security market, is now moving to make a difference in the wider defence arena. As David Trossell, the company’s chief executive officer and chief technology officer, explained to ESD during an exclusive interview on 18 August 2025, Bridgeworks initially specialised in transferring data from one SCSI protocol to another, acquiring a reputation, as he put it, “for doing the unusual or the impossible”. However, while Bridgeworks had previously licensed its solutions and relied on embedded contracts with manufacturers, what the company actually wanted was a product that it could take to the market and sell direct to a customer.
Around 2009 this led to the development of SANSlide: a block-level storage protocol accelerator that crucially used AI to control the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) stack within the data bridge. While at 10 milliseconds a conventional bridge would typically lose 90% of the performance of through its TCP/IP layer, Bridgeworks’ AI-controlled bridge brings that throughput up from 10% to 95%, making a huge difference in how much data can be moved and how quickly that data can be moved.
By way of example one Bridgeworks client, the CVS pharmacy in the United States, was trying and failing to transfer 450 gigabytes of data per day between two virtual tape libraries located in Arizona and Rhode Island, with the process achieving at best 50 gigabytes in 12 to 15 hours. Bridgeworks’ technology took this daily back-up down to 45 minutes. Bridgeworks’ technology thus has significant military applications for where bulk amounts of mission-critical data need to be moved rapidly and assuredly over long distances.
Crucially, Trossell noted, “We’re the only company where you can send us encrypted data.” Rather than decrypting the data to send it and then re-encrypting it at the other end, Bridgeworks’ technology allows the encrypted data to be sent exactly as it is.
With a range of AI-enabled products allowing data to be rapidly moved across wide area networks (WANs) regardless of distance, size or type of data, Bridgeworks is now addressing a number of opportunities in the military market, focusing primarily on the major defence prime contractors.
Meanwhile, in April this year the US Department of Defense fully accredited a zero trust architecture (ZTA) offered by Dell Technologies under the name Project Fort Zero, encompassing technologies from around 30 entities, of which Bridgeworks is one, having signed a contract with Dell in January this year. ZTA is a modern cyber-security framework that eliminates implicit trust and mandates strict verification for every user, device and connection before granting access to resources, operating on the principle of ‘never trust, always verify’. This protects against threats by preventing unauthorised lateral movement within networks, regardless of the user’s location.
Bridgeworks’ onboarding as a technology provider to Dell’s Project Fort Zero required two-and-a-half years of negotiations covering engineering, financial and legal requirements. Further to this opportunity, some of Bridgeworks’ established customers, such as the US National Security Agency, which has Bridgeworks technology installed at its Fort Meade headquarters in Maryland, have opened a number of doors for the company in the intelligence community.
Bridgeworks’ WANrockIT and PORTrockIT products have also achieved full functionality at the non-profit US Technology Advancement Center in Columbia, Maryland, which seeks to advance technologies needed to solve critical defence and cyber security challenges.
Looking further ahead, Bridgeworks will also seek to address opportunities arising from the AUKUS trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, where the secure and rapid transfer of data will be vital to empowering the trilateral alliance.
Click here to read the article on European & Security Defence.