The moderator chose the concept of cyber war games because of some discussion he had with an employee who worked with the National Guard. The moderator shared how they train the National Guard folks to prepare for cyber warfare and how they use cyber ranges and cyber war games to take people that were military officers and then turn them into offensive and defensive cyber security practitioners.
Of the six practitioners at the table, everyone thought the idea of implementing these cyber war games was a good idea and decided to discuss the idea further. The spectrum ranged from development of targeted social media campaigns that task and evaluate the effectiveness of those existing capabilities, up to and including the full red/blue team.
There are companies that set up cyber ranges for training purposes. They’re in the process of trying to make a business model out of it. In furthering the discussion, the group felt that the use of cyber war games could serve as an effective, hands-on experience for preparing fresh hires for the kinds of challenges they might face in a real crisis scenario.
Resources and time were some key reasons that the group felt these kinds of simulations weren’t run as often, but felt that there was a significant amount of potential for future use. A strong emphasis was once again put on the idea of allowing those fresh out of college the opportunity to test and hone their skills to develop the preparedness and sharpness required to tackle real cyber war games.