CybersecurityPracticing Cybersecurity Gets Easier
It’s expensive to train the people who defend us from cyberattacks. When big companies hold a large-scale exercise, they often take several months to prepare for it. Lots of people and computers, routers and other hardware form a complex infrastructure to create an attack that is as realistic as possible. That’s a good approach, but at the same time it is time consuming and expensive. This is where the Norwegian Cyber Range comes in, enabling medium and smaller players to train, too.
Cyberattackers continually target the general population, businesses and public actors. The major attack on Norsk Hydro recently was a strong reminder of this.
“We train defenders,” says Basel Katt, an associate professor at NTNU’s Department of Information Security and Communication Technology in Gjøvik.
He is coordinating the work of creating the Norwegian Cyber Range (NCR), a comprehensive program that will make it easier to simulate data attacks and defenses.
Program Saves Money and Time
It’s expensive to train the people who defend us. When big companies hold a large-scale exercise, they often take several months to prepare for it. Lots of people and computers, routers and other hardware form a complex infrastructure to create an attack that is as realistic as possible. That’s a good approach, but at the same time it is time consuming and expensive.
“Building this sort of thing isn’t easy. Besides, if we want to train defenders, we also need attackers. Large companies can hire some of the best hackers to plan and execute an exercise. Companies of that size can afford to do this,” says Katt.
But not everyone has this much time or money. This is where the Norwegian Cyber Range comes in and enables medium and smaller players to train, too. And the NCR may also be an option for larger actors who don’t always need to train using large scale attacks.
To be precise, we’re not just talking about a simulation, but an emulation. A simulation is something that behaves like something else, but does not necessarily adhere to all the rules and reality. An emulation goes several steps further and copies reality as closely as possible. The program thus provides realistic training in a cost-effective way. That’s a positive development.
The idea is that the program itself will largely emulate and build a network and different types of attacks and defenses, without any manual adjustments. But it is also possible to adjust the program as desired. At the same time, people can be assigned roles as attackers or defenders and try out roles from both sides.
Multiple Levels
Several countries are
