What types of cybersecurity skills can you learn in a cyber range?

What is a cyber range?

A cyber range is an environment designed to provide hands-on learning for cybersecurity concepts. This typically involves a virtual environment designed to support a certain exercise and a set of guided instructions for completing the exercise.

A cyber range is a valuable tool because it provides experience with using cybersecurity tools and techniques. Instead of learning concepts from a book or reading a description about using a particular tool or handling a certain scenario, a cyber range allows students to do it themselves.

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What skills can you learn in a cyber range?

A cyber range can teach any cybersecurity skill that can be learned through hands-on experience. This covers many crucial skill sets within the cybersecurity space.

SIEM, IDS/IPS and firewall management

Deploying certain cybersecurity solutions — such as SIEM, IDS/IPS and a firewall — is essential to network cyber defense. However, these solutions only operate at peak effectiveness if configured properly; if improperly configured, they can place the organization at risk.

A cyber range can walk through the steps of properly configuring the most common solutions. These include deployment locations, configuration settings and the rules and policies used to identify and block potentially malicious content.

Incident response

After a cybersecurity incident has occurred, incident response teams need to know how to investigate the incident, extract crucial indicators of compromise and develop and execute a strategy for remediation. Accomplishing this requires an in-depth knowledge of the target system and the tools required for effective incident response.

A cyber range can help to teach the necessary processes and skills through hands-on simulation of common types of incidents. This helps an incident responder to learn where and how to look for critical data and how to best remediate certain types of threats.

Operating system management: Linux and Windows

Each operating system has its own collection of configuration settings that need to be properly set to optimize security and efficiency. A failure to properly set these can leave a system vulnerable to exploitation.

A cyber range can walk an analyst through the configuration of each of these settings and demonstrate the benefits of configuring them correctly and the repercussions of incorrect configurations. Additionally, it can provide knowledge and experience with using the built-in management tools provided with each operating system.

Endpoint controls and protection

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated and remote work becomes more common, understanding how to effectively secure and monitor the endpoint is of increasing importance. A cyber range can help to teach the required skills by demonstrating the use of endpoint security solutions and explaining how to identify and respond to potential security incidents based upon operating system and application log files.

Penetration testing

This testing enables an organization to achieve a realistic view of its current exposure to cyber threats by undergoing an assessment that mimics the tools and techniques used by a real attacker. To become an effective penetration tester, it is necessary to have a solid understanding of the platforms under test, the techniques for evaluating their security and the tools used to do so.

A cyber range can provide the hands-on skills required to learn penetration testing. Vulnerable systems set up on virtual machines provide targets, and the cyber range exercises walk through the steps of exploiting them. This provides experience in selecting tools, configuring them properly, interpreting the results and selecting the next steps for the assessment.

Network management

Computer networks can be complex and need to be carefully designed to be both functional and secure. Additionally, these networks need to be managed by a professional to optimize their efficiency and correct any issues.

A cyber range can provide a student with experience in diagnosing network issues and correcting them. This includes demonstrating the use of tools for collecting data, analyzing it and developing and implementing strategies for fixing issues.

Malware analysis

Malware is an ever-growing threat to organizational cybersecurity. The number of new malware variants grows each year, and cybercriminals are increasingly using customized malware for each attack campaign. This makes the ability to analyze malware essential to an organization’s incident response processes and the ability to ensure that the full scope of a cybersecurity incident is identified and remediated.

Malware analysis is best taught in a hands-on environment, where the student is capable of seeing the code under test and learning the steps necessary to overcome common protections. A cyber range can allow a student to walk through basic malware analysis processes (searching for strings, identifying important functions, use of a debugging tool and so on) and learn how to overcome common malware protections in a safe environment.

Threat hunting

Cyber threats are growing more sophisticated, and cyberattacks are increasingly able to slip past traditional cybersecurity defenses like antivirus software. Identifying and protecting against these threats requires proactive searches for overlooked threats within an organization’s environment. Accomplishing this requires in-depth knowledge of potential sources of information on a system that could reveal these resident threats and how to interpret this data.

A cyber range can help an organization to build threat hunting capabilities. Demonstrations of the use of common threat hunting tools build familiarity and experience in using them.

Exploration of common sources of data for use in threat hunting and experience in interpreting this data can help future threat hunters to learn to differentiate false positives from true threats.

Computer forensics

Computer forensics expertise is a rare but widely needed skill. To be effective at incident response, an organization needs cybersecurity professionals capable of determining the scope and impacts of an attack so that it can be properly remediated. This requires expertise in computer forensics.

A cyber range can help an incident responder to gain the necessary skills in cyber forensics. This includes the use of tools like Autopsy and FTK to properly gather evidence, and the interpretation of the data collected as part of a forensic investigation.

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Building cybersecurity skills through hands-on experience

Cybersecurity books can provide a great deal of useful information; however, hands-on experience is essential to fully grasping a concept and gaining the skills necessary for a cybersecurity role. Cyber ranges enable students to gain the skills that they need via hands-on, guided experiences.