How Does Cyber Range Training Improve Soft Skills?

How Does Cyber Range Training Improve Soft Skills? 

By David Neuman, TAG Cyber  

This blog is the final installment of a series from TAG Cyber that focuses on using cyber range and simulation training for security operation center (SOC) teams to improve individual and team effectiveness. The Cloud Range platform is used throughout the blog series to illustrate world-class range training for these teams. Check out the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth blogs of the series.

Cyber range training is critical for IT and security operations teams to improve their defense against cyber-attacks. With cyber threats constantly evolving, security teams must be trained and prepared to protect their company's infrastructure, data, and employees. Cloud Range’s cyber range training helps teams hone their technical skills by simulating real-world scenarios in virtual environments while improving their critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, teamwork, and leadership abilities.

Cyber range training is one of the most impactful ways to train IT and security operations (SOC) teams to defend against cyber-attacks. Range training leverages virtual environments to simulate a real-world attack through immersive training scenarios to determine how cyber professionals will respond to determined attackers or eventual breaches.  

In addition to improving the SOC's ability to respond to a major attack while increasing the team's hard skills, cyber range training also helps teams improve their soft skills beyond the technical knowledge grown through their careers. Soft skills focus more on critical thinking, problem-solving, communication skills, insight/instinct, and teamwork.  

Cyber range training improves the team's critical thinking & problem-solving skills. 

Cyberattacks are dynamic and change quickly. Cyber range training tests an organization's ability to adapt to what is happening in the environment, change its actions and be responsive enough to keep up with new attack methods. The realistic, live-fire simulation exercises enable security teams to identify and react to threats in a real-world environment by using various technologies, procedures, flight guides, and run books. When security teams actively train in environments that simulate a real-world breach, they are more likely to retain the information learned and respond more quickly and effectively when an actual breach occurs.          

Cyber range training improves communications skills. 

Putting security teams under pressure during the simulation forces the unit to react quickly, analyze real-time information, and provide actionable status updates to all levels. Participants must coordinate effective and contextual communications within their security operations or incident response team, and range training can help different teams work together, such as IT and OT SOC teams. Cyber range training also can help improve communication across the entire enterprise from the board, executive management, legal, media, and the company's partners and customers. The environment improves the teams' ability to provide relevant and timely information and articulate the risk factors impacting the organization. 

Cyber range training improves teamwork and leadership skills. 

The cybersecurity space is an ever-changing field. Cyber range training leaves security professionals better prepared and more experienced than they came in. Because the live fire cyberattack simulations are designed for the whole team to work together (like being in an escape room), the exercises improve collaboration, leadership skills, and unit cohesion. The sophisticated range provides an isolated and curated environment to help security teams gauge their efficacy when they deal with an active attack or security breach. An ongoing cyber range program allows organizations to take part in multiple missions, which provides opportunities for people to step into different roles, including team lead. Teams walk away with insight and practical experience in handling an attack without the risk. Security operations teams learn how to manage threats and exploits holistically, mitigate them as a team, and be prepared for whatever comes their way. 

Cyber range training helps SecOps teams increase insight into other aspects of the business, especially compliance. 

One of the most daunting tasks SecOps teams have been understanding the requirements of standards and regulatory bodies that govern how enterprises solve problems, ensure compliance, and, most importantly, disclose information to law enforcement or auditors. Cyber range training helps SecOps teams gain a cross-functional viewpoint and identify potential gaps in the organization's compliance requirements, such as PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOX, etc. The range can help reveal gaps by testing controls and responses in a live simulation. 

Cloud Range helps teams to improve both hard and soft cybersecurity skills.  

Every seven days, our TAG team tracks an average of 950 new common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVE), with 140 different attacker techniques, tactics, and procedures (TTP) and 20 breaches that average 30 separate incidents of compromise (IOC) across all industries. Specifically, government, healthcare, industrial, and transportation are the most targeted. The attack surface is consistently changing, so SecOps teams must be trained and prepared to lead and protect their company's infrastructure, data, and employees. Cyber range training enables SecOps teams to move from a defensive posture to being proactive to deal with today's threats.

While cyber range training helps teams deepen their hard and technical knowledge, it also improves their soft skills. It makes teams more cohesive, aligned with the enterprise mission, and more proactive to threats while reducing overall corporate risk. One such service provider, Cloud Range, has a compelling solution that helps security teams with insights, metrics, and tools to help improve their customer’s overall security posture.

Cloud Range provides custom simulation training solutions for SOCs and incident response (IR) teams. Range security solutions, like Cloud Range, help security teams improve their cyber resiliency and readiness and more effectively protect governments, enterprises, managed security service providers (MSSP), education institutions, utilities, and critical infrastructure organizations, to name a few.

Get a demo of Cloud Range to learn how our cyber range-as-a-service improves your SecOps team’s technical proficiencies and soft skills. Get your team ready for the next cyberattack and reduce your risk.

About TAG Cyber 

TAG Cyber is a trusted cyber security research analyst firm, providing unbiased industry insights and recommendations to security solution providers and Fortune 500 enterprises. Founded in 2016 by Dr. Edward Amoroso, former SVP/CSO of AT&T, the company bucks the trend of pay-for-play research by offering in-depth insights, market analysis, consulting, and personalized content based on thousands of engagements with clients and non-clients alike—all from a practitioner’s perspective. 

Copyright © 2023 TAG Cyber LLC. This report may not be reproduced, distributed, or shared without TAG Cyber’s written permission. The material in this report is comprised of the opinions of the TAG Cyber analysts and is not to be interpreted as consisting of factual assertions. All warranties regarding the correctness, usefulness, accuracy, or completeness of this report are disclaimed herein.