Unbelievably, less than 6 weeks ago, most of us, including myself, joined over 45,000 industry professionals to attend the RSA 2020 Conference. The theme of this year’s conference was The Human Element. For the first time, we have officially placed people before technology, understanding that no matter what high-end technology we use or how much we have spent, it is useless if we have not also invested in training our cyber defenders to operate it. Today, we are facing this reality while our cybersecurity teams are transitioning to remote work and reducing their training due to travel restrictions, particularly when it comes to SOC teams.

The security operations center (SOC) is dramatically impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak. The SOC is the heart of a mature information security organization, responsible for detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity incidents. According to the SANS SOC Survey of 2019, lack of skilled staff is the most frequently cited SOC barrier to excellence. Customers are now setting up remote and distributed SOCs. As a result, SOC teams are forced to learn new ways to communicate, collaborate, operate security systems, and access their networks remotely.

In addition to having to master new skills, SOC teams have put training on hold as a result of travel restrictions and social isolation requirements. Travel to training courses is no longer an option, teams cannot congregate for team exercises and tabletop sessions, and overall team members’ skill levels are deteriorating.

Therefore, we have decided to provide $100,000 worth of live cyberattack simulation training on our cloud-based Cyber Range. These training exercises will help SOC teams challenged with maintaining their skills at these difficult times, whether distributed, at home, in the office, or any other location.

To participate in an exercise, trainees will connect to a cloud-based virtual SOC and use commercially licensed security tools to respond to live, simulated cyberattacks based on real-world threats. We will dedicate our team of experienced cyber range instructors who will lead the session over a video conference system and will provide detailed real-time feedback and assessment. Remote trainees will be able to experience the challenges of collaborating and responding to incidents in a distributed environment across the entire process of detecting, investigating and remediating the attack. The training exercises are mapped to the NICE Cybersecurity Framework and designed to develop the NICE KSAs (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) required for SOC practitioners.

We have set up this registration page for organizations who would like to register their team to free, live cyber range training. You can also contact us for this initiative by emailing TrainRemoteSOC@cyberbit.com.

This is the least we can do to support the community and I really hope that our initiative will contribute to our global preparedness in this difficult time, and make a small difference.

Stay Safe,

Adi Dar,

CEO, Cyberbit