Blue Team Exercises
Fortifying the last line of defense with team-based live-fire simulations
What is a blue team?
The blue team in cybersecurity is made up of threat hunters and cyber defenders. It can include security operations center (SOC), incident response (IR), and digital forensics team members, and other cybersecurity professionals. The blue team is charged with fending off cyberattacks and protecting an organization’s network, systems, and assets.
What are blue team exercises?
Cloud Range’s blue team simulations allow security teams to work together in our cyber range – multiple people and different roles at one time – to detect, respond to, and remediate a live-fire cyber attack in a simulated, realistic environment.
Blue Teams and Live-Fire Simulation Training
Blue team exercises are typically part of a FlexRange program, which is a planned series of attack simulations – or missions – in Cloud Range’s virtual, realistic environment. The enjoyable live-fire simulations are tailored to the experience levels and objectives of your team to ensure measurable, continuous growth and improvement while encouraging critical thinking and teamwork.
Similar to an escape room, the blue team doesn’t know what it’s looking for when the scenario starts. Team members can use our commercially licensed, market-leading security products and open-sourced tools within the controlled IT, OT, and cloud environments to investigate and work through real-world exercises.
Also like an escape room, the live-fire simulations are led by expert instructors who counsel and give tips to the blue team to ensure they are learning and will successfully accomplish their tasks.
No One Does Instructor-Led Blue Team Training Like Cloud Range
Each hyper-realistic mission in our FlexRange is overseen by our experienced security experts, ensuring team members can ask questions and receive the guidance needed to successfully detect, investigate, respond to and remediate the live, simulated attacks.
Our experts guide the team to work together to improve their technical abilities and judgment, as well as their communication and collaboration.
Instructors evaluate teams and individuals on technical and soft skills. The metrics are used to prescribe a continuous action plan for security teams that yields measurable results and demonstrates improvement over time.
Train Using Industry-Leading Security Products
Cloud Range’s library of attack scenarios provides teams of cyber professionals with the ability to detect and respond to live attacks, just as they would in a real, production environment.
Licensed tools — including SIEMs, firewalls, IDS’s, endpoint security systems, and analysis tools — allow your trainees to practice using the same products they will use in real-life scenarios. Optional customization allows additional tools to be integrated into your environment to further mimic your security toolset.
Integrated Performance Portal
The Cloud Range training platform includes a standards-based Performance Portal that objectively captures each blue team member’s knowledge, skills, and abilities, resulting in robust reporting capabilities that map to the NICE (National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education) Workforce Framework for Cybersecurity. The Performance Portal tracks progress toward completing learning plans aligned to the NICE Framework KSAs.
In addition to blue team exercises, Cloud Range offers red vs. blue exercises, purple team exercises, and more.
Blue Team Cyber Simulation Exercises – the Who, What and How
Who is going to use it?
Blue team live-fire simulation exercises usually start with the SOC analysts. Instructor-led sessions ensure interaction and engagement based on the varied skills and roles within a team.
What are they going to do?
Blue teamers will engage in one or more missions. They will not know the attack scenario going in, but they will have to work things out - similar to an escape room. To determine the exercise, Cloud Range experts analyze the types of attacks that are happening a lot in specific industries, as well as what attacks will help teams meet their goals and bridge any gaps. We work with the security leader to define the plan and prescribe the next steps.
How often are they going to do it?
Most blue teams do these exercises once a month, but we can accommodate whatever cadence is best for the organization. Defenders experience a different type of attack simulation each month, and the exercises may expand to different teams, such as forensics or incident response.
How will they access it?
Our range is virtual or on-premise. Team members should access it in the same way that they work, whether that is from the office or from home.
What are the objectives and metrics for success?
These vary with each company. For example, an objective may be to demonstrate continual improvement over time by employing consistent metrics and measurements, or it may be to increase cyber readiness by team engagement in customized attack scenarios. Ultimately, most objectives seek to shrink detection and response time.
How will it be planned and executed in a practical way?
Most security leaders do not have time to schedule the exercises and coordinate schedules. Cloud Range helps with all of that. We take on the administration and coordination and provide an engaging, educational experience.
Hone Specific Skills
In addition to our cyber simulation programs for teams, Cloud Range offers hundreds of FlexLabs SkillsPaks that energize your team member’s individual development with hands-on cybersecurity skills training in our interactive, emulated environment.
