Gaining and improving practical experience in cybersecurity, learning how to defend against cyber-attacks and respond effectively and quickly to security incidents is extremely difficult. Although the number of cyber-attacks worldwide is growing at an unprecedented rate, the number and variety of such incidents over the time spent in a given position is not sufficient to gain experience. To compensate for this, nations, cybersecurity agencies and military organisations are creating Cyber Ranges, where participants can test their skills and develop their abilities in a simulated environment, individually or in teams, on both the offensive (red team) and defensive (blue team) sides.

 

The Cyber Range is a controlled and simulated environment designed to train, test and evaluate cyber security skills, tools and techniques. It provides a safe and controlled environment for cyber security professionals and enthusiastic and eager students to learn, where they can practice and develop their skills without causing real harm.

These infrastructures can vary in complexity and scale, from simple virtual environments to more advanced and sophisticated simulations. They can mimic various real-world scenarios, such as cyber-attacks, data breaches, malicious code damage and other network intrusions.

The implementation of a successful cyber exercise revolves around three main pillars: firstly, the development and management of a virtual infrastructure (green team), secondly, the definition of the tasks of the red team, and thirdly, the development of good blue team strategies and tools.

The aim is to develop a "cyber range" and different attack scenarios along these three pillars, which will teach students step by step the different attack methods and how to defend against them. Initially, simple attacks and vulnerabilities are presented that are easy to understand and manage, and then gradually progress to more complex attacks and defence strategies.