Photo By Col. Wayde Minami | Specialist Marie Vogler, an intelligence analyst with the Maryland Army National...... read more read more
Things are changing for the 800-plus men and women participating in Exercise Cyber Shield 17, the National Guard cyberdefense exercise being held this week at Camp Williams, Utah.
For the past week, they’ve discussed traffic analysis, threat containment, industrial control systems and a host of other topics related to network defense. They’ve sat side-by-side receiving training in everything from cyber forensics and malware analysis to legal responsibilities and command and control of cyber forces. They’re comrades in arms, regardless of component or branch of service, who stand on the front lines of cyber defense.
But all that is over.
Yesterday, Cyber Shield 17 transitioned from training week to exercise week, and the men and women participating in the exercise went from being students to cyber operators locked in mortal combat over the networks they’ve been tasked to defend—or to disrupt.
“It’s one thing to talk about it—it’s another thing to do it. And this where we come to do it and put fingers on keyboards,” Louisiana Army National Guard Lt. Col. Henry Capello, the exercise commander, explained. “We want to train as we fight… so the more we can replicate the real-life environment here, the better we can prepare to respond to it.”
In preparation for the fight ahead, the former comrades have split into separate teams: Blue Cell defenders and Red Cell aggressors. The Blues are at a clear disadvantage: not only are they facing highly skilled adversaries, but the networks they’re responsible for have been deliberately set up with security vulnerabilities, just as they might find in the real world.
The Blue Cell members have no illusions about the challenge they face.
“They have a lot of sharp guys,” National Guard Capt. Dennis delRosario, who is leading the Blue Cell team from Maryland, said. “Some of them have decades of experience, and it shows… It’s pretty scary knowing that they’re the ones who are on the other side of the screen.”
While delRosario said that having “some friendly competition” is a good thing, he stressed that the real goal is to get as much learning value out of the training as possible. That means that if a Blue Cell team is able to defeat a Red Cell attack, it can expect that the Red Cell will keep increasing the sophistication and difficulty of its hacks until they exceed Blue’s capability to handle.
According to National Guard Maj. Kevin T. Mamula, leader of the Ohio Blue Cell team, the exercise is designed to challenge the Blue defenders “to their breaking points.” The goal is form more effective teams by stressing their skills to the utmost.
The classrooms now stand empty and the cyber warriors are settling in to workstations set up in buildings across the post. At their fingertips are the tools they’ve been trained on and practiced with. Now they’re going to put them to use.
In other words, the gloves are coming off and it’s time for war—cyber style.
| Date Taken: | 05.02.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 05.02.2017 12:24 |
| Story ID: | 232276 |
| Location: | UTAH, US |
| Web Views: | 221 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Cyber Warriors Lock Horns in Utah, by Col. Wayde Minami, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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