Using cyber range technology can be one of the most effective ways to increase your organization’s readiness level for potential cyber threats and attacks. It can help you train your team in a safe environment, save costs, and test new technologies in an effective way.
There are lots of cyber range benefits that different global enterprises make use of. In this article, we would like to share 8 different ways this technology can be beneficial to your organization.
What Is a Cyber Range?
Before we delve into the benefits of a cyber range, let’s define what it is, and why do organizations invest their time and efforts into this technology.
We can define cyber range as a simulated environment that different organizations use to train their cybersecurity personnel and test their incident response capabilities. This technology typically includes different tools, systems, and a simulated network infrastructure that can help companies prepare for any kind of potential cyber threat or attack.
The aim of the cyber range technology is to provide a safe environment and assist enterprises in gaining cyber skills for security posture testing.
8 Benefits of Using a Cyber Range for Your Organization
Now that we have an overview of what is a cyber range, let’s have a look at different benefits that cyber ranges can provide to different organizations worldwide:
1. Learning Experience in a Safe Environment
One of the most useful cyber range benefits is that it provides a highly controlled virtual environment where organizations can reuse and replicate training modules at any time they want without having a major impact on their systems and live networks.
This gives your organization’s team members a flexibility to experiment and learn how to leverage new tools to improve their skill set. Having this kind of technology results in more hands-on training programs and an increased level of understanding among the team.
Besides, cyber ranges have ready-made frameworks such as the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) framework, which provides a set of building blocks for describing the needed tasks and skills for individuals and teams to perform cybersecurity work.
2. Cost-Effective Way to Train Your Team
Another big benefit that cyber ranges are known for is the cost effectiveness of this solution. Given that your organization is using a virtual cyber range and not a legacy platform, their overhead is significantly lower than other training tools.
Generally, modern cyber ranges are easy to deploy and configure, making it a perfect place for your team to practice and improve their overall cyber security skills.
That way, cyber range benefits entire organizations by developing processes for responding to cyber incidents. If you use cyber ranges to simulate scenarios specific to your industry and operational environment, they can be used as part of even larger training exercises as well.
3. Security Process Optimization for Your Company
Cyber ranges can also help organizations optimize their technology stack and security processes. Validating the security stack can be challenging at times, but another useful benefit of a cyber range is that it allows you to test, adjust, and validate your existing incident response plans.
There are different metrics to look out for in this case. You can test how quickly incident direction systems trigger and what are the different responses that the team initiates. As a result, companies can modify settings and test how their attack surface responds.
4. Run Live Team Exercises
Cyber ranges let companies run live team exercises and test their members in different scenarios. These exercises give everyone a chance to work on a specific cyber incident as a team.
Different types of exercises, such as Red vs. Blue, Threat Hunting, and others give every participant an opportunity to learn how to work together and how to improve their skills in specific scenarios.
5. Place for Team to Collaborate and Learn From Each Other
Another notable point from cyber range benefits is that it allows organizations to practice their team’s collaboration skills in simulated cyberattack scenarios. Cyber ranges make an ideal environment for any company’s team members to practice their individual skills in a team setting.
Cybersecurity must be a collaborative effort, and these kinds of exercises can help to raise awareness among the members of your organization.
Generally, cyber ranges consist of different scenarios that can be quite competitive, allowing exercise participants to practice and get ready to handle real-life cyber attacks and incidents.
6. Team Assessment on Their Cybersecurity Skills
Cyber range benefits your organization’s training and development efforts as well. It is a great tool to train and assess the skills of your employees. It can help you understand the level of your team’s knowledge and address skills development needs if necessary.
That way, the management in your company is more aware of what skills their team members have already mastered, and what are the areas that need more attention and investment from their side.
7. Assess Potential Hires
Other than checking your existing team member’s level of knowledge in cybersecurity, you can also use cyber ranges to assess your potential hires as well. Different exercises can help you make sure that your candidates have the proper knowledge and experience to tackle real cybersecurity challenges at work.
It is very hard to properly understand the technical background and knowledge of a candidate during the selection process. Cyber range can help you check how they communicate and collaborate under pressure in real threat scenarios.
8. Test New Ideas and Technology
Cyber range is a perfect place to test any kind of new idea you might have for improving the company security efforts. Simulated cyber response enables decision makers to assess new technologies in real-world situations and make decisions based on their performance.
These kinds of simulations are low-risk and low-cost ways to test new ideas and learn what worked and what needs improvements. This way, teams can easily move forward with ideas that pass different scenarios in a cyber range.
Conclusion
In today’s digital world, where cybersecurity is becoming more challenging and serious, we see the increased need for cyber range technology from companies operating in different industries. All sorts of organizations, from international corporations to governments, are struggling to find and train their staff to prepare for potential cyber threats and attacks.
That’s why it is important for them to utilize the cyber range technology, to make it easier to increase their cyber defense capabilities and improve overall readiness of their organization.
At CybExer, we have been at the forefront of shaping the industry since 2016. We are committed to providing global organizations with advanced Cyber Range technology, which will help them prepare and tackle upcoming challenges.
Our platform offers a wide range of advanced cyber security training modules designed to enhance the cyber capabilities of organizations on a global scale.
If you’d like to learn more about our offering, schedule a call with our cyber range experts to discuss how we can help you address your organization’s needs.
