Practicing Cybersecurity Gets Easier

developing their own variants of cyber range, but the Norwegian one stands out. This is the first platform to test security where the idea is to practice defense on three levels.

· The first is the overall strategic level, called the “community level,” where the country is subjected to a computer attack. What happens if our country no longer has access to electricity after a computer attack? How can we manage without a cellular network? How should we react to keep society going?

· The second level is the tactical level, or what is called “the digital value chain level,” which looks at how different parts of a computer network are affected if parts of it are attacked or knocked out.

· The third is the level of operation, called the “infrastructure level.” The main idea is to train on attack and defense in a realistic computer network consisting of programs, hardware and various other components where attacks or defenses can be simulated.

“The goal is to be able to practice on all these levels,” says Katt.

National Initiative
The work of developing the Norwegian Cyber Range began just under year ago, and much still remains to be done. A total of three years has been allotted to develop a working prototype.

This is a national initiative. NTNU’s Department of Information Security and Communication Technology is also cooperating with other actors, such as the Norwegian Armed Forces. But a lot of the work is being done by students and employees at NTNU. About 25 lower-level students are involved, in addition to four doctoral students, three post-doctoral fellows, two professors and administrative support.

Students can also qualify for national and international championships where they compete with other schools and institutions in computer attacks and defence.

In October 2019, the finals of the European Cyber Security Challenge will be held in Bucharest, Romania. Norwegian participants are being recruited from among 16- to 25-year-olds in Norway. The Norwegian finals took place at NTNU in Gjøvik on 27 April 2019.

The article is published courtesy of Gemini, which publishes research news from NTNU: Norwegian University of Science and Technology and SINTEF