Members of the Army National Guard, Air National Guard, Army Reserve and partner civilian agencies carried out mock cyber attacks in a Red Cell versus Blue Cell exercise as part of Cyber Shield 18 at Camp Atterbury, Ind., May 14-18.
Cyber Shield 18 is an Army National Guard event with over 800 participants that begins with a week of classroom preparation and culminates in Exercise Week, scenario-based cyber role-playing. This is the seventh iteration of Cyber Shield, which began in 2012 and trains cyber warriors of the Army National Guard, Air National Guard and Army Reserve, as well as civilians who work in law enforcement, intelligence and information technologies.
“Cyber Shield is real,” said Lt. Col. Brad Rhodes, commander of Cyber Protection Team 174 for the Colorado Army National Guard, and the Deputy Officer-In-Charge for Cyber Shield 18. “It’s about as real as it gets for these defenders, and it gets them that realism, so they can take that back and actually perform in an incident response in a credible manner.”
During Exercise Week, the mock scenario featured a private sector, contracted infrastructure partner in the transportation industry, whose network systems were infiltrated by hacktivists. The partner needed to call in the National Guard to mitigate the risk and improve their networks.
Red Cell members acted as enemy or hostile adversary hackers to challenge and push the limits of the Blue Cell’s cyber warriors.
