Towards a Robust and Scalable Cyber Range Federation for Sectoral Cyber/Hybrid Exercising: The Red Ranger and ECHO Collaborative Experience

• Published in: Information & security 2022, Vol.53 (2), p.287-302
• Main Authors: Sharkov, George, odorova, Christina T, Koykov, Georgi, Nikolov, Ivan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Consortia; Cooperation; Cybersecurity; Decision making; Design; Infrastructure; Simulation
• ISSN: 0861-5160; 1314-2119
• DOI: 10.11610/isij.5319

Cyber exercising is essential to crisis management preparation and maintaining a robust cybersecurity posture. To prepare for growing hybrid threats, complex cyber-hybrid scenarios with practical cooperation at the technical, operational, and higher decision-making levels are increasingly being used, leveraging the power of cyber ranges. Alas, owing to a lack of suitable simulation infrastructure and the ability to adapt cyber ranges to varied situations, such complex scenarios often remain inaccessible. The federation of cyber ranges is one potential response to this challenge, providing a solution for the individual cyber range limitations in terms of resources to replicate complex cybersecurity-relevant realities. The current contribution describes the authors' experience designing the Red Ranger, a Composite Cyber Range. We detail the design and development to facilitate the agility required to support a working multi-faceted federation with the ECHO Cyber Range to allow for an "exercise-as-a-service" model to provide adequate and accessible cyber-hybrid mechanisms for crisis response training and preparation.