Cyber Range Training And Simulation With Cloud-Based Technologies

With IT operations becoming increasingly complicated and cybercrime on the rise, it’s more vital than ever to keep your IT department and employees up-to-date with modern cybersecurity practices.

Recent studies by Cybersecurity Ventures and Verizon have verified that cybercrime will have cost $6 trillion in worldwide damages by 2021 and that, while large enterprises are always in the crosshairs, small-to-medium-sized companies are susceptible to it now as well.

Protecting your business is about more than just installing antivirus programs on everyone’s computers. All employees and management must have the knowledge and experience to deal with potential data breaches, phishing attempts, viruses, and other online threats that could compromise the personal information of your clients, your sensitive internal documents, and your credibility as a business.

And it’s even more important that your IT teams are trained to handle the latest threats, so they can identify and respond to them with increased efficiency.

Many software vendors now see cyber range solutions as the ideal choice for organizations wanting to increase the relevance and effectiveness of the training they provide to partners, employees, and key stakeholders.

Your Current Efforts Need an Upgrade

Many firms have struggled with obtaining practical cybersecurity training for their staff, according to one study by Tripwire.

The on-site classrooms many professionals use currently present several difficulties:

• It’s hard to coordinate schedules for participants and instructors.
• The learning environment does not provide significant hands-on training.
• Businesses that expect to expand in the future may find it challenging to scale classes to accommodate additional employees.
• Users don’t always get the opportunity to experience cyber threats as they exist in the real world.
• Knowledge retention rates are lower using traditional learning methods.

However, a new development known as cyber range simulations can alleviate these drawbacks and result in more effective and less expensive training options for businesses of all sizes.

Since these cloud-based virtual labs are available online, participants can access course materials from any machine with an internet connection, cutting down travel costs, removing locational barriers, and freeing up everyone’s schedule significantly.

The Importance of Interactive Experience

Arguably the most impactful benefit of cyber resilience training is how it teaches cybersecurity concepts in the context of real-world scenarios. In the same way how book tests aren’t enough to teach a student how to drive without actual experience, merely reading about security protocols is entirely different from seeing how your network responds to an attack and how it impacts your business’s systems.

Cyber range testing gives employees simulated cases of cyberattacks and allows them to experiment with mitigation strategies interactively. This type of real-world training will enable participants to visualize how these threats occur and respond to them in a simulated environment.

And because cyber training is repeatable, it helps commit these skills to muscle memory and builds hands-on experience so that your security/IT professionals are ready to respond when a threat occurs.

It also enhances their problem solving skills as they’ll understand how to detect, assess, and respond to a potential threat based on their interactive virtual training.

Use Cases of Cyber Range Training

Cyber ranges are one way companies are leveling the playing field against cybercrime. It’s a tool that CISOs and SOC managers use to simulate real-world attacks they may experience in their IT and OT environments.

This cloud-based training approach can provide:

• A training opportunity for security staff to collaborate when dealing with incident response.
• A means of teaching all partners and employees what to do in the event of a breach, even the ones who don’t work in IT or security directly.
• A tool to get new employees up to speed with the organization’s cybersecurity standards.
• Access to updated security protocols that are based on industry best practices and legitimate testing.

Improve Every Aspect of Cybersecurity Training

Is your company looking for a reliable cyber range training platform? CloudShare enables cybersecurity companies to run sophisticated virtual environments for cyber range testing.

Keep your organization ahead of the curve with interactive cloud-based virtual training labs that will keep your partners and employees engaged in a way that traditional learning techniques can’t.

Contact a member of the CloudShare team today if you’re interested in learning more about cyber range simulations.