The Future of SOC Readiness and Cyber Resilience

The Future of SOC Readiness and Cyber Resilience

How Immersive Live-Fire Attack Simulations Improve Team Readiness and Counteract Emerging Threats

As the cyber threat landscape grows, it’s crucial to ensure your SOC is prepared. In the fireside chat, "The Future of SOC Readiness and Cyber Resilience," Debbie Gordon, CEO of Cloud Range, and Ed Amoroso, CEO of TAG Cyber, shed light on how live-fire simulation exercises can increase cyber resilience and give executives, boards, and regulatory bodies risk management and reporting strategies to safeguard their organizations.

The Role of Readiness in Cyber Defense

The adage, “be prepared” is a crucial motto for cybersecurity teams. Readiness isn't only about having the right technology and processes in place. It's also about ensuring that the people — particularly those in SOC and incident response (IR) teams — are ready to face potential threats. SOC teams are the last line of defense, and this is where immersive live-fire attack simulation exercises come into play. These simulations allow SOC teams to proactively prepare for various types of attacks in a safe, controlled environment, significantly increasing readiness and reducing exposure for the whole organization.

The Dynamics of Team vs. Individual Training

In cyber defense, team play is crucial. While each member must have unique skills, the real strength lies in how these skills combine. It's like baseball, where individual abilities in batting, pitching, and sliding count, but team coordination and performing under pressure is the goal. A SOC team’s ability to combine their skills, act quickly and decisively under pressure, and maintain clear communication will determine success. Whether identifying a potential threat, mitigating an ongoing attack, or preventing future breaches, each move must be perfectly coordinated. 

Ultimately, it's the seamless execution as a single, efficient unit that outwits adversaries and safeguards an organization’s assets.

Adapting to Advanced Offensive Tactics

The cyber landscape continually evolves, with bad actors now leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to launch automated attacks. This means that defense teams must constantly improve their skills to keep up. Realistic, automated attack simulations are critical in preparing teams for this evolving threat landscape. 

Furthermore, with the increasing connectivity and complexity of networks, the risk of cyber attacks is higher than ever. A cyber range program can replicate this complexity providing a more realistic experience.

Using Assessments to Recruit Cyber Talent

Cyber range simulations, labs, and assessments can play a crucial role in recruitment, allowing organizations to test a candidate's real-life skills. This “in the line of fire” approach can provide valuable insights into a candidate's performance, decision-making ability, and teamwork skills. It's not just about identifying the best performers but about finding those with the potential to grow and improve with the right training.

Utilizing Threat Intelligence to Improve Security Training

Threat intelligence can provide a broad set of attack scenarios, regularly updated and expanded to reflect the evolving nature of cyber threats.

Two industry-standard frameworks, NICE and MITRE ATT&CK, play crucial roles in this process. The NICE Framework outlines roles, skills, knowledge, and competencies required in cybersecurity — shaping practical training and learning paths. The MITRE ATT&CK Framework presents a detailed collection of tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that cybercriminals use, assisting teams in understanding and countering real threats.

Using these tools, a full-service cyber range platform becomes more effective and dynamic, preparing teams for ever-evolving cyber threats.

The Importance of Preparatory and Follow-Up Training

Preparation is vital in cybersecurity training, but the nature and extent of that preparation depend on the individual skill levels within a team. Tools like Cloud Range FlexLabs™ offer individual training modules to enhance specific skill sets, preparing team members for live fire simulations.

Moreover, the learning journey continues as live-fire simulation exercises are completed and areas for improvement within a team can be identified. Additional training modules can then be used to create a progressive training plan and bridge any gaps.

The Challenges and Solutions in Communicating Cybersecurity Progress to Leadership

Board members and senior leadership teams do not typically require an intricate understanding of every cybersecurity campaign. Instead, they are interested in understanding the team's competencies and whether it is improving. Demonstrating progress can be challenging, and the focus should be on the steps taken to strengthen the team’s abilities. Even advanced teams need ongoing training to prepare for the increasingly complex attack types that continue to emerge. Cloud Range’s Executive Debriefs and Performance Portal provide both high-level metrics and detailed insights to help security leaders know how to upskill their team and show ongoing measurable improvement to the board.

Tailoring Cybersecurity Training for Different Sectors

While certain attack types might be more prevalent in specific industries like finance and healthcare, it’s vital and relevant for all sectors to engage in cybersecurity training. That’s especially true for industries in critical infrastructure. Operational technology (OT) and industrial control systems (ICS) demand a unique approach because of the different entry points for attacks, dangers, and organizational challenges they present. Live-fire cybersecurity training accommodates the different objectives and protocols, ensuring the scenarios are effective across different sectors. 

The Cloud Range solution featuring IT/OT attack scenarios with virtualized PLCs and HMIs offers comprehensive cyber defense training. The ability to use real-life tools, including well-known OT options like Claroty, Nozomi, and Industrial Defender, further enhance the realism of the dynamic experience.

Including Live-Fire Attack Simulations in Tabletop Exercises

Most organizations conduct tabletop exercises as a part of their regular cybersecurity protocol. While this requirement marks a step in the right direction, it often becomes a check-the-box exercise that needs actionable outcomes. The industry needs to progress toward making live-fire simulations a required aspect of tabletops. 

Cloud Range provides Tabletop 2.0™ exercises that do just that. The benefit is that the exercise involves adding live-fire components that include the security team and enable better communication among all parties during an incident, making the exercises more actionable and beneficial. Instead of conducting a tabletop exercise that starts after an attack has occurred, Tabletop 2.0 simulates an attack before it happens so leadership, the PR and legal teams, and the SOC are all responding to a real-world incident and seeing the real-time ramifications.

Getting Started with Cybersecurity Simulation Training

Starting with a single simulation mission can be an excellent introduction to a cybersecurity simulation training program. After experiencing the benefits of simulation from a single exercise, organizations can build a compelling case for incorporating it as a regular line item in their cybersecurity budgets.

Cybersecurity simulation can be an engaging and rewarding experience for SOC analysts and IR team members and a huge confidence boost. The training exercises provide an invaluable opportunity to improve their skills, readiness, and hands-on experience while enhancing the overall cybersecurity posture of their organization. Contact us for a demo!

Get more information about these and other topics discussed in the fireside chat by watching the video.