Delivering “Virtual,” Real-World Experiences to Build Elite Cyber Teams
Created May 2019 • Updated February 2025
The SEI conducts research in cyber-range technologies to enable the delivery of realistic exercises that effectively develop elite cyber teams for the Department of Defense (DOD). To achieve success, cyber teams need to train like they fight, but delivering real-world experience as part of an exercise is challenging. The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) offers a unique perspective to overcome this challenge thanks to its expertise in software, its close collaboration with the DOD, and its understanding of the DOD’s mission. As a result, the SEI provides cyber exercises that offer more than just quality content; they offer cyber operators a way to familiarize themselves with the pace and pressure of real scenarios, what it takes to perform well under such conditions, and how to succeed as a team.
Are Your Cyber-Team Exercises Good Enough?
Cyber teams defend missions, networks, weapons systems, and other critical assets from cyber attack. Under the pressure of such missions, the DOD should not be left to wonder if cyber teams are properly equipped and prepared to defend against adversaries that are always working to find new and unexpected ways to attack our networks. The DOD must have confidence that its cyber teams are prepared for mission success.
If cyber teams only learn to work together when they encounter actual threats on operational networks, adversaries gain an upper hand. Exercises are key for preparing cyber operators to work together effectively, but how can you know if your exercises are good enough to prepare cyber teams to overcome emerging challenges?
Individual training commonly teaches cyber operators how to use their tools. To be effective, however, cyber operators must do more than learn to use their tools—they must learn how to function as a team under the pressures of realistic scenarios. To create realistic environments, team exercises must replicate common social and technical interactions so that cyber operators learn to work together by building a sense of teamwork and confidence.
The problem is that these kinds of exercises are difficult to create, and the DOD is often left without ready access to collective training exercises that are engaging and effective. Without sufficient expertise in development and orchestration, exercises can feel cobbled together without a unified experience that achieves objectives or builds elite skills.
Cyber Exercises That Build Elite Teams
The SEI has over forty-years of experience creating novel software solutions to DOD challenges. This experience enabled several important partnerships in cyber exercises, including with the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM). For over a decade, the SEI has helped to develop and evolve NETCOM’s Gaining Cyber Dominance (GCD) exercise program to promote the mission readiness of the Army’s Regional Cyber Centers and Cyber Protection Teams. GCD exercises validate understanding of mission-essential tasks using events that place teams in live-fire scenarios.
This collaboration enables research and development into effective cyber-range design and operation and the creation of the best team-based learning experiences available to the DOD. The SEI’s engineers are constantly building new exercises featuring emerging real-world threats and realistic networks filled with simulated characters and integrated cyber attacks. These cutting-edge exercises reflect the extent to which artificial intelligence is emerging as both a tool and as a threat. Our engineers integrate these new and emerging capabilities into exercise scenarios. The SEI continues to make the results of its research available through the release of open source software and technical publications.
The SEI can help your organization develop realistic and engaging cyber exercises to prepare your teams to perform at elite levels. We can work with your organization either onsite or virtually to develop an engagement that will improve team performance. By delivering the right level of realism, our engineers deliver an experience that you can’t get from other programs. We can help your cyber teams perform at their highest levels by gaining team-building experiences within realistic scenarios. Our exercises will expand confidence that teams can prioritize actions well even when the pressure is on, and that each team member is prepared to work together effectively.
Contact us to discuss our team exercises.
Learn More
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CWD Tools for Improving Cyber Simulations
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Download the open source software tools that the SEI developed to create realistic cyber simulations or access information to learn more about each one.
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