High Lander Aviation has signed a strategic collaboration with Abu Dhabis’Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC)’s applied research arm, and VentureOne, ATRC’s commercialization arm, today at UMEX 2026, an event for manned and unmanned autonomous systems, to forge new airspace security standards in the UAE.
The parties say they will collaborate in research and development with a focus on the critical issue of information security in the age of integrated, digital airspaces. The end goal is the development of a national-level security infrastructure that will power developed and scalable drone ecosystems, while establishing digital sovereignty in national airspaces and creating an important blueprint for the rest of the world to follow.
The intention to collaborate was supported by Alon Abelson, the CEO and founder of High Lander, Dr. Najwa Aaraj, the CEO of TII, and Reda Nidhakou, the CEO of VentureOne.
Aviation safety is becoming increasingly reliant on authenticated data exchanges, said the company in a press release. As such, High Lander, TII, and VentureOne will collaborate towards establishing new end-to-end security standards based on zero trust principles and including hardware security module (HSM) support for secure key storage and non-repudiation capabilities, ensuring data security even in the most complex, high-volume environments.
“High Lander’s extensive operational expertise has clarified that airspace safety in the era of drones is only achievable with robust cybersecurity,” said the company. “By combining their solutions with TII’s renowned research capabilities and VentureOne’s go-to-market expertise, the parties are creating an exciting collaboration which will be instrumental in advancing the UAE’s roadmap towards its ‘Economic Vision 2030’, a key element of which is the country’s positioning as a global leader in autonomous aerial systems and advanced air mobility.”
Dr. Najwa Aaraj, TII’s CEO, said: “The future of unmanned aviation depends on trust that is engineered, not implied. By embedding zero-trust security principles into UTM systems, TII is developing technologies that ensure authenticated, tamper-resistant, and non-repudiable data flows across increasingly complex airspaces. This collaboration is a critical step toward resilient drone ecosystems that can operate safely at national scale.”
The collaboration will include other areas of exploration too, with a focus on creating systems that can be integrated into national infrastructures seamlessly and without system overhauls. Developments will include work on secure, modular integration layers featuring protocol-agnostic SDK interfaces supporting MAVLink, ROS2, and NATS. They’ll also be refining advanced connectivity strategies for airspace stakeholders, developing standalone secure UTM tracking hardware with Secure Boot, anti-spoofing and Drone ID revocation capabilities, developing active cyber defence systems, and more.
For more information
//www.highlander.io/post/zero-trust-utm-tii-ventureone-and-high-lander-join-forces-at-umex-to-forge-new-airspace-security
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