This article explains the function of cyber ranges, their importance for organizations, and how to set up a cyber range in systems. A cyber range is an environment established by organizations to test their cybersecurity capabilities and tools in a secure environment. These environments enable companies to test cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities. Realistic simulations of cyber threats are tested in these environments instead of real systems. These environments are often actively used by cybersecurity professionals, military organizations, and researchers. Cyber ranges are actively used in companies to develop innovative defense strategies. As cyber attack methods evolve, the importance of such environments is increasing day by day.
A cyber range is an environment designed to train, test, and develop cybersecurity capabilities and tools in a secure environment. Cyber ranges enable employees or teams to practice defending against and responding to cyber attacks without compromising real environments, data, or organizations. Cyber ranges range from simple virtual environments to complex network simulations that mimic real-world cybersecurity challenges.
There are many benefits of having a cyber range in structures. These benefits are shared in detail below.
Realistic training experience
A cyber range provides a realistic environment for cybersecurity professionals to train and practice. It simulates real-world structures, networks and attack scenarios, allowing users to experience real threats and understand how to detect and analyze them.
Skill Development
A cyber range is an environment where employees can prepare for potential cyber threats. Therefore, cyber attacks similar to real-world ones are found in these environments. Working in such environments allows employees to improve their skills. They can detect the aspects they lack in their analysis and work on these issues. For example, an employee who is good at threat detection but deficient in forensics and incident response can develop themselves by solving examples in related areas.
Safe testing environment
Cyber ranges offer a secure test environment to test new security products, techniques or strategies without risking the real infrastructure and data belonging to the organization. This environment enables organizations to improve their cybersecurity defenses without risk.
Continuous Learning
Cyber ranges provide employees with the opportunity to both improve themselves and overcome deficiencies against cyber threats. This ensures that employees improve themselves in the areas in which they are deficient. In this way, employees can improve their deficiencies and constantly learn new things. A cyber range also helps employees stay current and learn new techniques in the defense field, as it enables them to test new cyber threats.
Scenario-Based Training
Today, advanced persistent treats (APT) groups are becoming increasingly threatening for organizations. There are common techniques used by such groups. Scenario-based detection rules can be written to take specific measures against such groups. Cyber ranges can work safely for any desired scenario. This will help security specialists to be better prepared for the alerts.
Performance Assessment
A cyber range enables organizations to evaluate the performance of their employees more effectively. It allows the employees to see the actions to be taken in the face of real attacks that will occur in the future. This helps employees to see their shortcomings in the event of an incident. In addition, it enables the evaluation of processes for detecting and analyzing cyber incidents and taking the necessary actions in advance.
Research and Development
The complexity of cyber threats is increasing every day. In addition, there may be immediate cyber threats that are monitored by attackers. In order to track these threats, environments such as honeypots can be installed on the systems. Cyber ranges are the perfect environments to test the honeypot. With cyber range, the defense team can test a project by executing it in this environment before they run it in the real world. This allows to see the impact of the related project in the structure in advance. Also, it enables testing vulnerabilities in systems and obtaining sample logs of attackers. Thus, various detection rules can be written in the real environment with the relevant logs.
Cyber ranges are mainly used by military and government organizations. They are designed to train, test, and develop cybersecurity capabilities and tools in a secure and controlled environment. Cyber ranges allow employees or teams to practice defending against and responding to cyber attacks without compromising real environments, data, or organizations. Personnel and groups actively using cyber ranges are shared below;
Cybersecurity professionals
Security analysts, penetration testers, and other cybersecurity employees in SOC teams use cyber ranges to improve their skills. They detect logs of attempts to exploit current vulnerabilities. Then, they write detection rules in real environments.
Bug bounty hunters
Bug bounty hunters actively use cyber ranges to test cybersecurity issues and new vulnerabilities. This is because the cyber range environment helps them find and report bugs in a secure environment.
Cybersecurity Vendors
Academics and researchers use cyber ranges to study cybersecurity trends, conduct experiments, and test new tools and technologies in a controlled environment. Also, a cyber range is an environment where organizations test new technologies that they will deploy. They also use it to examine cyber threats and develop new defense techniques.
Government and military
Governments and defense organizations use cyber ranges for national security and defense training. They use them to be prepared against potential cyber threats and to simulate future cyber warfare scenarios. Military organizations use cyber ranges to train their personnel in cyber defense and offensive operations. These simulations help develop the strategic and tactical skills necessary for modern warfare.
First, the use and purpose of the cyber range should be determined. The environment and content will change according to different usage purposes such as training, testing or research. Once the intended use is determined, specific scenarios and use cases are simulated. The hardware, software and personnel required for the cyber range should be provided. Then, the architecture structure should be determined (virtual, physical, hybrid). The server, workstation and network environment required for the cyber range environment should be prepared. Since vulnerabilities of different technologies will be tested when the environment is ready, different OS and systems should be allocated within the budget (e.g., Windows, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, KVM). Security products (e.g., IDS/IPS, SIEM, firewalls, EDR/XDR) required to create and manage scenarios should be installed. In order to examine the alerts that will occur in the cyber range, the logs of these security products must be obtained in a healthy way. Logs of the system's network traffic, process logs and user activities should be obtained. In order to facilitate analysis and evaluation, the mapping of these logs should be done properly. The dashboard should be set up for real-time monitoring of the alerts that occur. Necessary groups should be established to create accounts that will provide access to the cyber range and to determine the access points of each user. You should assign roles and give permissions to users accordingly.
Afterward, you should prepare scenarios and tests according to the needs. You should collect feedback from the users at the end of the tests. Examine the performance metrics and the time it takes to respond to an incident. Continuously update and improve scenarios, tools, and infrastructure according to feedback and emerging threats. Keep your cyber range up to date with the latest cyber threats, tools, and best practices. It should be your goal to continuously learn and improve.
Cyber ranges enable both organizations and employees to improve their practices in taking action against real-world cyber threats without putting their real systems at risk. In this way, they will shorten the time to take action against future cases without putting themselves at risk. Cybersecurity personnel improve their skills and stay up-to-date by seeing current attack techniques in an isolated environment. This will enable them to analyze incidents more efficiently and shorten their action times. Cyber ranges are vitally important for organizations as well as for employees. Because organizations have the chance to test new technologies and new strategies without deploying them in a live environment. It helps companies develop incident response plans and procedures by simulating cyber attacks. This will make them better prepared for future alerts. In addition, researchers also use cyber ranges to examine new attack techniques and create innovative defense mechanisms. Testing in a cyber range prevents potential risk, damage and downtime that may occur on live systems. It enables users to continuously learn and develop by periodically conducting tests and evaluating the results of these tests.
Cyber ranges play a vital role in modern cybersecurity by providing a realistic and controlled environment for testing and development. They enable cybersecurity personnel to gain the practice of examining and responding to cyber threats without risking real systems and their data. By simulating real-world cyber threats, they help cybersecurity teams improve their skills, create incident response plans and continuously learn. They allow organizations to test new tools and security strategies. As cyber threats evolve, the importance of cyber ranges is increasing day by day. It has become an indispensable tool for companies to protect their digital assets. We hope this blog will be useful for anyone who wants to learn about cyber ranges.
