TESTA is a private managed underlying secured & trusted communication network infrastructure allowing secure information exchange capabilities for operational co-operation & collaboration between the EU Institutions, EU Agencies, public authorities located in the Member States, UK, EFTA (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) & in the candidate countries (currently Montenegro and North Macedonia).

TESTA is meant for sensitive pan-European information exchanges between public authorities requiring guaranteed service levels for network availability, performance and/or security (confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability).

The Commission operates the TESTA network isolated from the internet and allows connected stakeholders and information systems to communicate at trans-European level in a safe and reliable way.

The current TESTA infrastructure has been built to be subject to a security accreditation process to allow the exchange of EU classified information up to the "RESTREINT UE" level.  The personnel assigned to operate the TESTA services have a minimum security clearance of National Confidential. TESTA is compliant with the EC Regulation (2018/1725) on Data Protection.

By sharing and reusing tools such as common network infrastructure, it reduces the time to market, at no cost for the connected stakeholders and information system's owner and offers significant reduction in complexity in terms of setup, infrastructure and service management for the country.

And last but not least, thanks to its private nature (isolated from the internet), TESTA is not exposed to the increasing threats on the Internet.