Overview

The University of Maine at Augusta (UMA) partnered with Cyberbit to launch the Maine Cyber Range in 2019, with the mission of enhancing cybersecurity education as well as increasing the number of fully prepared students entering the cybersecurity workforce. This mission extends to educating and supporting all universities within the University of Maine System including colleges and municipalities as well as public and private businesses in Maine and across New England as part of the Maine Cybersecurity Center. The Maine Cyber
Range serves an enrolled program of 300 students, attracting students from outside Maine alongside training to industry professionals.

UMA’s Motivations for Opening the Maine Cyber Range

1. Enhance UMA’s Academic Cybersecurity Program – Hands-on experience is essential to effective learning and knowledge retention. UMA decided to embrace the approach of hands-on simulation in order to provide an experience that resembles the ones that students will encounter during their professional career and prepare them to be a successful and contributing member of the workforce from day-one.
2. Build UMA positioning – Establish UMA as the local cybersecurity hub while engaging new student prospects and retaining the existing student population.
3. Address New England Cybersecurity Skill Shortage – With over 16,000 open cybersecurity positions in New England, UMA intended to increase the number of prepared students entering the cybersecurity workforce and support other colleges and universities in New England.
4. Train InfoSec Teams Across New England – Focusing mainly around large organizations, midsize businesses, local, state and federal government agencies, UMA has become the go-to training center to upskill the existing cybersecurity workforce in New England.

Choosing the Cyber Range Approach and Vendor

UMA explored several approaches:

Building a Cyber Lab In-House

This option was rejected for several reasons:

• Not Worth the Investment: Setting up, mcaintaining and operating a self-built range would be labor intensive and not cost effective.

• Hyper-Realism Difficult to Achieve: Achieving the level of realism and simulation desired would not be possible.

• Lack of Flexibility: Setting up, resetting, and customizing cyber range sessions may take several hours or even days.

• No New Exercises: Creating new exercises in-house would take a very long time and would not produce the desired quality.

• Lack Instructor Feedback Tools: A self-built lab would lack additional capabilities such as student assessment and recording.

3rd Party Gamified Cyber Ranges

Light “gamified” solutions did not provide the desired cyberattack experience that cybersecurity professionals would need. While they offered entry level knowledge by means of hands-on “mini labs” and challenges, they only provided snapshots of an attack and static exercises. The gamified solutions seen by UMA did not provide the complete simulation of a live cyberattack in a virtual SOC, across the entire cyber kill chain, which would allow students and practitioners to experience the complete and intense incident response process. These solutions also did not offer the option to use commercial security tools.

Cyberbit – Live Cyberattack Simulator in a Virtual SOC

UMA chose to pursue the approach of live cyberattack simulation in a virtual SOC, which most closely resembles the work environment in a corporate security operations center. UMA believes that the hyper-realistic approach would prepare learners in the most optimal way for the challenges they will encounter when responding to real world incidents. Cyberbit provides the optimal learning environment delivering the most realistic, live experience, alongside a wide range of exercises, ranging from entry-level and individual student skill building exercises, to advanced, team-based exercises.