The 2017 Check Point cybersecurity survey found that almost 65% of U.S. IT professionals did not feel confident in their organization’s overall security posture. Israeli startup CyberGym aims to bolster their confidence and enhance their defensive skills by providing training that immerses the participants in real-life-like cyber warfare experience.
“Before you go into a boxing fight,” says Ofir Hason, CyberGym’s CEO and co-founder, “you want to get the feeling of getting punched in your face. You want to do it in a training facility, with a trainer who knows what he’s doing. We provide companies, critical infrastructure organizations, and government agencies, with the right experience just before the real cyber attack.”
On June 25, 2017, Hason gave a tour of CyberGym’s training facilities in Israel to the international press delegation to Cyber Week 2017, a group of about 30 journalists (including myself), invited and hosted by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. CyberGym has similar facilities in Portugal, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Australia, and plans to expand in the near future to the North America and Asia.
In CyberGym’s training sessions, 3 teams participate in cyber war games: A “Red Team,” comprised of experienced hackers, attacks the infrastructure, IT systems, and physical plant and equipment as well as the business continuity and reputation of the organization represented by the “Blue Team”—the trainees—using technological and non-technological means such as social engineering. Members of the “White Team” use their years of experience in responding to and containing cyberattacks to manage the training and debriefing process, reviewing the Blue Team’s performance and providing recommendations. The training covers all types of employees and decision-makers—from IT specialists to senior managers—and is tailored to the specific organization and the context (legal, geographical, technical) in which it operates. This highly customized, hands-on training, costs between $100,000 to $300,000 per week.
By the end of 2017, Hason plans to establish a cyber grid, a network of CyberGym training facilities that will share information, experiences, and lessons learned from different places around the world. “The idea is to re-balance the forces in the battlefield, to change the rules of the game, give better advantage to the good guys,” says Hason.
Founded in 2013, CyberGym is a joint venture of Israel's National Electric Corporation (IEC) and CyberControl, a cybersecurity consultancy established by veterans of Israel’s National Security Authority (NISA) and other security experts. At the time CyberGym was established, Israel’s national electricity network faced up to 6,000 network events per second. The knowledge and experience gained in IEC’s defensive operations, as well as the Israel Defense Forces’ renowned Unit 8200, has served as the foundation for developing CyberGym unique approach to cyber warfare preparation and its emphasis on the human factor as the weakest link in cyber defense.
The Israeli training facility is housed in the renovated buildings of Heftziba Farm, a pioneer farm established by Jewish settlers in 1906. It suffered losses during the First World War and was finally abandoned in 1929. After it purchased the property in 1992, the IEC renovated the old (and charming) buildings and established in the area a small public park abundant in trees. Its use as a CyberGym training facility today serves as an apt symbol of Israel’s transition from agriculture to technology as the primary engine of the economy and of how Start-Up Nation has transformed the technological know-how gained from adversity to a thriving business.
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