All participants, civilian/military/law enforcement, were mid-level to senior officials with a good knowledge of the principles of network operation and related configuration aspects, and familiar with the Linux operating system, including the use of terminal tools. For this edition of the course, more than three times as many applications as places available were received. This proves that Cyber Range is of great interest in the civil and military EU community and demonstrates the achievement of the five courses already organized by CST CoE and ESDC.
The overall goal of the course was to improve participants’ knowledge and practical skills to enable them to increase the security of IT infrastructure for which they are responsible. Working with scenarios, students learnt to conduct penetration testing to identify potential vulnerabilities and weaknesses in order to potentially gain direct access to target resources. In this way, they learnt about the available cybersecurity tools and how they can be used in three different scenarios operating within the Cyber Range environment. The scenarios presented and enabled testing of virtual machines and networks in Reconnaissance, Exploitation, Wifi-Hacking, and Web Pentesting.
The course was opened by Mr Paweł Dziuba, Director of the Cyber Security Training Centre of Excellence (CST CoE) and by Mr Giuseppe Zuffanti, Coordinator for Cyber Issues- National Expert at the European Security and Defence College (ESDC). Mr Dziuba and Mr Zuffanti welcomed participants, provided an overview of the CST CoE, the ESDC, the EU Cyber Ecosystem and initiated an extremely useful tour de table.
The collective efforts of the CST CoE in Warsaw and the ESDC led to the creation of this specific course, which is now offered to the EU community as a part of the ESDC’s Cyber Education Training Exercise and Evaluation (ETEE) platform. This course programme full supported the “Penetration Tester” profile of The European Cybersecurity Skills Framework (ECSF) of ENISA and reflected the priority of the Strategic Compass of the EU, the EU’s Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade as well as the Digital Decade policy programme 2030.
We express our gratitude to the Director of the Cyber Security Training Centre of Excellence (CST CoE), Mr Dziuba, and the course director, for their committed participation in designing the course, in collaboration with the ESDC, and for managing the course. We also thank participants for attending all of the activities and for being open to learning, and we especially thank the experts of the CST CoE for their invaluable advice and insights during the course.
The next course to be run by the CST CoE under the auspices of the ESDC will take place from 4 to 6 June 2024 in Warsaw. The topic for that event will be “Cyber Range – defensive capabilities.
