Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Zane Craig | Master Sgt. Robert Beveridge (seated), a communications specialist with the 171st Air...... read more read more
FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. – Thirteen service members from the Pennsylvania and Virginia National Guards trained in cyber security operations May 15 here at the Cyber Range parallel to the Vigilant Guard exercise.
During the training, service members must deal with a random series of threats generated for them by the National Guard’s Professional Education Center in a closed network that mimics one used by most organizations.
“They’ll run a scenario on a range, and we have to monitor the network to identify threats,” said Army Capt. Joel Candelario, deputy team chief for the Joint Force Headquarters computer network defense team, and a Lebanon, Pa. native.
The service members dealt with their tenth scenario today and have responded effectively to every situation so far, said Candelario.
“They’ll watch the logs, watch network traffic, watch the firewall, and say ‘Hey look, I’ve got information going from an inside IP address to a commercial or outside IP address,” he said.
Today, information is being exfiltrated from their network to an outside entity. Information should never be flowing from inside the network to the outside, he said.
Candelario said the different states and components are working well together and learning a great deal from each other. They were even able to share knowledge with a Lithuanian cyber team member observer.
This range is parallel to Vigilant Guard, but if the cyber training were fully integrated, every time we experienced a cyber attack, the networks everyone else is using would be shut down for extended periods and greatly prolong the exercise.
“In the real world, users would lose connectivity and not be able to work at all until the threat is removed,” he said.
This is valuable training for us because it will increase our interoperability with civilian authorities and in the event of a cyber attack, said Candelaria.
“Each of us will rotate into each of the jobs here, including incident commander, that way we all train on everybody’s job,” said Air Force Master Sgt. Robert Beveridge, a communications specialist with the 171st Air Refueling Wing and a Pittsburgh native.
In the civilian world, Beveridge’s job, as a Carnegie Mellon University cyber security exercise developer and trainer, is to do what the range control does here, to develop the simulated attacks to test their system, so that has been very useful during this exercise.
As civilization becomes increasingly dependent upon technology, it is essential the National Guards, to have the training and experience to defeat cyber terrorism.
| Date Taken: | 05.17.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 05.17.2014 10:48 |
| Story ID: | 130166 |
| Location: | ANNVILLE, PA, US |
| Web Views: | 360 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Airmen and Soldiers unite to battle cyber threats, by SFC Zane Craig, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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