During the past six months, IBM X-Force has been seeing an unprecedented increase in requests to build cyber ranges. By cyber ranges, we mean facilities or online spaces that enable team training and exercises of cyberattack responses. Companies understand the need to drill their plans based on real-world conditions and using real tools, attacks and procedures.
What’s driving this increased demand? We suspect the all-remote work situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the priority to collaborate and train together as a team with the goal of being prepared for potential incidents.
Another force driving demand for cyber ranges is the rapid growth of high-profile attacks with seven-figure loss events and the public disclosure of attacks, impacting reputation and financial results. Damaging attacks, like data breaches and ransomware, have cemented the criticality of effective incident response to prevent worst-case outcomes and rapidly contain eventual ones.
Once you decide that your cybersecurity team and other actors in your cyberattack response protocols need to practice together, the economics for a dedicated cyber range is compelling. An organization can train many more employees more quickly through a dedicated cyber range.
But before you pull the trigger and order a cyber range, you should make a full evaluation of the pros and cons. The primary con, of course, is that a dedicated cyber range might be oversized for the organization’s long-term needs. You might not use it enough to justify the costs of building and operating an actual range. Alternatively, you might prefer to run cyberattack exercises remotely to more closely simulate the real work environment of your teams.
This post will provide a primer on conducting a graduated cyber range evaluation and ..
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