Basalt builds secure, internet-disconnected IT systems for society's most sensitive operations. When Nicklas Haglund, CEO and co-founder, started the company in 2009, the business concept went against the grain. Today he says the market has caught up.

In the late 1990s, straight after his studies and a brief stint at a large consultancy firm, Nicklas Haglund ended up at the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV). There, he and a group of conscripts were tasked with sending email out in the field via a new communications system, over connections so narrow that he now compares them to a drinking straw.

"We strapped computers down with tension straps in armoured tracked vehicles and drove out into the forest to test sending email," he says. "That's when I found my calling."

Since then he has done nothing else. He went independent early on: he realised FMV was not a priority customer for consultancy firms at the time, and asked FMV directly whether they would keep hiring him as a consultant if he started his own business. They said yes. At the age of 23, he set up a limited company and bought a laptop.

It was a time of large field staffs, when technology had not quite caught up yet. Kosovo became his first overseas mission, and Haglund helped build the command and control system used there.

In the mid-2000s, something bigger took shape. In Enköping (central Sweden), a development centre was built where FMV, the Swedish Armed Forces and industry were meant to meet, and Haglund helped set up the operation. He became technical project manager for the IT system for the Nordic Battlegroup 08 (NBG08), the EU's Nordic battlegroup. Earlier systems had been built for the Swedish armed forces, in Swedish. Now everything had to work in English, with EU Secret classification and NATO compatibility. The system concept developed became the foundation for what is today known as the Sweccis command and information system. The project grew substantially and delivered IT systems to the army, the navy and the international task force, from Afghanistan to Djibouti.

When the operation was due to be procured, it was no longer feasible to run it with consultants from a range of different companies. A single supplier was required. In 2009, Haglund started Basalt together with a few partners, for two reasons. One was to organise the business ahead of a major forthcoming procurement. The other was that the market for building secure IT systems for security protection purposes was fragmented, with individual experts scattered across different consultancy firms.

"We wanted to make it easier for the Swedish Armed Forces and other authorities to build this type of system, predictably and with high quality," says Nicklas Haglund.

Three years later, the procurement came. Basalt submitted its own bid and won the contract in competition with several larger suppliers.

What the company builds is, in Haglund's words, modern, cloud-based IT systems, but disconnected from the internet. Servers, networks, clients and, in some cases, cryptographic equipment, all gathered into what he calls an island in the IT world, which in turn can consist of many smaller islands linked to one another in a cryptographic network. The nodes can communicate with each other, but not outward, and nothing from outside can get in. The systems handle security protection up to the level of Secret, which imposes rigorous requirements, not least on assurance: full traceability of how the system was built, in which premises, by which personnel and with which software.

"There has to be traceability from start to finish," he says.

When Basalt started, interest was limited. In practice, it was only the Swedish Armed Forces and FMV that sought out this type of system. Around 2013, when everything was moving to the cloud, the company's focus on standalone, disconnected systems seemed outdated. The vision nevertheless remained firm: to be a cog in the building of a resilient Sweden.

"The market has caught up with our business concept," says Nicklas Haglund.

He points to a series of turning points. At the end of 2017, the Swedish Defence Commission concluded that an armed attack on Sweden could not be ruled out, and the following year a new security protection act was introduced. The company's own survey, the Swedish Security Index, initially met with lukewarm interest. The 2020 pandemic exposed weak supply chain preparedness, and when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, civil defence became a topic on everyone's lips. But according to Haglund, it is only this year that developments have really gathered pace.

"Both military and civil defence still have a long way to go," he says. "It's a ten-year project."

The patriotic tone Basalt has carried since its founding did not resonate in 2015, he notes, but meets a completely different response today, both in recruitment and among those seeking to join the company. Today, the majority of revenue comes from the Swedish Armed Forces and agencies under the Ministry of Defence, while civilian authorities and companies account for a growing share. The Swedish Armed Forces remains the top priority.

Today Basalt has 180 employees.

"I'm often filled with gratitude to be the manager of such capable people," says Nicklas Haglund.

Looking five years ahead, the business concept remains fundamentally the same, even though AI and other technologies are creating new demands. What may change is the perspective. Basalt is now looking towards its Nordic neighbours, and further ahead towards northern Europe, from Germany and the Netherlands to Poland and the Baltic states.

"Our next step takes us beyond Sweden's borders," says Nicklas Haglund. "Our neighbours arguably have even greater needs than we do, and there is certainly fertile ground there."