An In-Depth Analysis Powered by the UNIDIR Cyber Policy Portal

Awareness and Trust-Building

The core objective of this extensive interactive map is to foster the participation of all stakeholders in international policy-making processes, enhancing trust, transparency, and collaboration in cyberspace. At devx, we won a competitive bid from the UN research institute UNIDIR—becoming the sole company awarded the project. Our task was to migrate the existing website to a new CMS platform, significantly improving the platform's overall speed and reliability. We also enhanced the map’s functionality.

A Global Map Reflecting Geopolitical Realities

The Cyber Policy Portal serves as a comprehensive database of cyber-related information. To improve user navigation and data accessibility, we revamped the interactive map to align with UN-recognized geopolitical boundaries. The map dynamically connects to the data populated within the CMS by UNIDIR.

To ensure accurate data representation in line with UN standards, we employed the Leaflet library—a solution that supports mapping using the GeoJSON format. After developing the map’s foundation, we integrated dynamic data connections and filtering features using ElasticSearch. This allows users to efficiently search for relevant cybersecurity documents by country or organization.

ElasticSearch runs independently as a Kubernetes-based application, offering distributed search and analytics capabilities. It efficiently indexes, analyzes, and retrieves data of any size, ensuring users can control their search experience and easily identify trending topics for optimization. We specifically leveraged ElasticSearch’s scoring algorithm for relevant query results, asynchronous search for handling long queries in the background, search term highlighting, and typo corrections for improved accuracy.

Strapi CMS—A Smarter Approach

While UNIDIR initially used the traditional open-source WordPress CMS, its monolithic architecture posed significant limitations by tightly coupling the frontend and backend. To overcome these constraints and enhance flexibility, we rebuilt the application using Strapi CMS, a modern Headless CMS that decouples content management from the presentation layer.

With Strapi, we gained complete control over how content is delivered and displayed, making it easier to create a faster, more scalable, and more secure system. We utilized a GraphQL API to fetch structured data efficiently, enabling seamless integration with a Next.js frontend. This setup ensures optimal performance and allows for custom front-end experiences tailored to different platforms and devices.

To further enhance speed and reliability, we implemented advanced caching mechanisms that significantly reduce server load. Both the CMS and frontend run separately within Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, security, and global scalability.

By leveraging Tailwind CSS alongside Next.js, we optimized the UI for both performance and responsiveness, ensuring a seamless user experience. The transition to Strapi CMS has unlocked greater flexibility, improved content management, and a more modern tech stack—future-proofing the platform for years to come.

Multilingual Support and Cost-Effective Translations

In compliance with strict UN guidelines, the application supports all 7 official UN languages, including right-to-left (RTL) variants. Since most documents are available in English, we integrated Google Translate API to offer seamless on-site translation for users. This provides a convenient feature while relieving UNIDIR from the responsibility of guaranteeing translation quality.

To minimize translation costs, we implemented caching for all translation queries. This ensures that returning users or others accessing the same content benefit from previously translated versions—keeping the service within the free usage tier of Google Translate API.

Ongoing Development and Future Plans

The Cyber Policy Portal is an evolving project at devx, with plans to develop three additional platforms based on the same core framework. We are also working on creating new pages for unidir.org, further supporting UNIDIR’s mission to promote global cybersecurity policy awareness.