4 février 2021 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

Qatari research center chooses Leonardo for cyber range

BEIRUT — A Qatari cyber research center has selected Leonardo to provide a cyber range and training system to support security operations, the Italian firm announced Feb. 3.

The Qatar Computing Research Institute, or QCRI, was established by the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. The training platform ordered by the QCRI is capable of simulating cyberattacks so users can assess the resilience of digital infrastructure.

“The training is completely to be performed in Qatar, and it is expected, through an approach oriented to ‘train the trainers,' to provide courses to a significant number of operators involved in the cybersecurity framework,” Tommaso Profeta, managing director of Leonardo's Cyber Security Division, told Defense News.

He noted that training and exercise scenarios can be customized using a drag-and-drop graphical interface. The platform can also analyze and classify the results of simulated attacks based on data collected during real-world offensive campaigns. Scenarios can be used for individual training or classroom experiences, and they provide practice for security operations centers and incident response activities.

This training tool “will allow the QCRI to deliver a complete cyber training process, from the design of the learning path to specific training sessions. Users will be able to practice their skills in simulated attack and defense scenarios, employing both information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT). The training will produce qualified teams of operators equipped with up-to-date knowledge and techniques, ready to face ever-evolving cyber threats,” according to a company statement.

“The best cyber training/testing environments are in theory real production systems. But in practice for such environments, institutions, enterprises and organizations cannot easily experience critical situations without paying high, sometime unaffordable prices,” Profeta said. “Training and testing are therefore the two essential, human-driven processes that can effectively support the overall cyber ‘protection' loop, but only if they can cope with real threats and highly realistic systems in highly realistic situations.”

Cyber ranges provide a controlled environment where cybersecurity experts can practice their technical and soft skills in emulated complex networks and infrastructures to learn how to respond to real-world cyberattacks. In these environments, cyber tools can be stressed to reveal their limits and vulnerabilities before deployment into cyberspace. Leonardo's platform challenges such assets and provides digital twin environments for predeployment testing.

Asked whether other Gulf countries have expressed interest in this training system, Profeta said it “has already been presented to other high-level Middle East stakeholders, and a significant level of interest has been registered for the platform.”

What scenarios are available?

Those using the cyber range will try to defend against simulated but realistic cyberattacks. According to Profeta, these include:

  • Man-in-the-middle attacks.
  • Botnets.
  • Exploitation of client and server vulnerabilities with lateral movements in search of sensitive data.
  • Distributed denial-of-service attacks (HTTP flooding or domain name system reflection) designed to disrupt connections to a targeted server.
  • Ransomware via multiple vectors, such as spear-phishing via email or drive-by downloads, relying on DNS-based covert channels.
  • Data exfiltration of personally identifiable information and intellectual property.

Though it's difficult to measure the potential effectiveness of this platform for Qatar, the company official predicted the system will reduce the cost of and improve the user experience in cyber training.

Leonardo also supplies the NATO Computer Incident Response Capability, a cyber defense product.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2021/02/03/qatari-research-center-chooses-leonardo-for-cyber-range

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Crews on shore will be going through those trainers, he said. “So, these ships are going to be out there half the time while the [off-hull] crews are back training in higher-fidelity training environments,” Boxall explained. “And what [commanding officers] will tell you is that as we get to higher and higher fidelity training, time to train becomes equally as valuable. “So, in an increasingly complex environment, it's just intuitive that that you have to have time to train. We think Blue-Gold makes sense for those reasons on the frigate.” Lessons from LCS Getting more simulator time for surface sailors has been an initiative championed by the Navy's top surface warfare officer Vice Adm. Rich Brown. It's an off-shoot from lessons-learned from FFG(X)'s predecessor, the LCS, which has extremely high-fidelity simulator trainers for its crews before they take over their assigned hulls. One thing the surface force has been intrigued to see has been the high quality of the officers that come up through the LCS program, something the Navy in part attributes to the trainers, Boxall said, and the SWOs want to replicate that for the FFG(X). “One really interesting side-note with LCS has been the quality of the training,” Boxall said. “As we went back and looked at the lessons learned from McCain and Fitzgerald, we're trying to apply some of the good things about LCS to that. “Those officers, because they are smaller ships they get a lot more water under the keel. And they're faster ships so they are getting that water under the keel in a faster-moving environment. So we're creating a generation of officers who are getting tougher navigation environments thrown at them more quickly, and we're also getting the quality and fidelity of their trainers.” This has meant that LCS officers more-than stack up to their peers from larger, more advanced ships, he added. “What we're seeing is they are doing very, very well against their contemporaries coming off the bigger ships,” Boxall said. “Why is that happening? It's fairly logical: More stick time, better fidelity trainers and more time in the trainers.” Ownership The littoral combat ship adopted the Blue-Gold crewing model after a series of high-profile breakdowns, some caused by crew errors. The original model was to have three crews for two hulls, a rotational model that the Navy worried was taking away from the sense of ownership for a single, specific hull that permanently attached crews might have to a greater degree. 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