Madrid. 20 June 2018. Minsait, Indra’s digital transformation business unit, works with the Carlos III University of Madrid in an innovative project to equip its Minsait Cyber Range training platform with the ability to automatically generate personalized training programs, perfectly adapted to each student’s cybersecurity knowledge and learning speed and adjusted to the real problems that they will face in their organization or company.
The project will convert the Minsait Cyber Range platform into the first on the market that is capable of offering mass training, which is mainly practical, tailored and adjusted to the specific needs of each organization or company.
In doing so, Minsait responds to the difficult challenge that advanced countries face: to quickly and effectively train the huge number of experts that need to protect themselves from more and more frequent and sophisticated cyber attacks. Next year, an estimated two million jobs will be vacant in this sector worldwide, according to the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
In addition to training a whole new generation of experts, these countries need to offer ongoing training to active professionals, which results in an ever increasing demand that can only be met with intelligent technologies such as Misait Cyber Range.
The Minsait platform is currently the most advanced. Last year it put to the test the skills of more than 1,000 professionals from the Armed Forces, Security Forces and Bodies, official organizations, universities and companies from fifty countries.
Minsait and the Carlos III University of Madrid will now provide it with more intelligence so that it can analyze, in a completely autonomous way and in real time, the skills and knowledge of each student. It will also take into account the level that they must reach, the type of organization they work in and the area of attack that they must defend, among other factors.
Minsait Cyber Range will be one of the first training tools in the world adapted to the NICE framework developed by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (US NIST). A framework that has been published recently and that catalogs the different cybersecurity work functions, defining categories and areas of specialization and identifying for each of them the knowledge, skills and competencies required. It is an initiative in which the US administration, in collaboration with companies and universities, has invested more than a decade of work.
The improvements that Minsait is incorporating into its platform will mark a before and after in the way of conceiving practical training in cybersecurity.
The contents will be perfectly structured and adapted dynamically to each student, without the need for an instructor’s intervention. The professional’s preparation will thus be accelerated and it will be ensured that the time and resources employed are maximized.
The realism of the exercises will be even greater and the presence of human instructors or adversaries will be optional. To this effect, the solution will generate network traffic, either synthetic or replicated; and will automate the adversary’s actions, be it a defender (if we are training attack) or an attacker (if we are training defense). In addition, the orchestration and conduct of the attacks will be carried out in a manner consistent with the purpose of the exercise and will take into account the student’s responses.
It also automates real-time monitoring and supervision of student performance and actions, to be able to evaluate how they perform with complete accuracy. The system will also provide aid proactively when it so deems appropriate, without waiting for the student to ask for it.
Finally, it will have tools to automatically compose new exercises based on a catalog of prior knowledge and the professional’s specific needs.
Minsait Cyber Range is one of the most advanced cyber-entertainment solutions on the market. It has been designed by Indra to support intensive individual and group training in techniques and tactics related to cyberdefense, cyber attacks and forensic analysis. The solution has been used in different CyberCamps organized by the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE). It was also used in the exercise that took place at the Autonomous University of Madrid in which university students, experts from the Civil Guard, the Joint Cyber-Defense Force and INCIBE participated. The platform was also used in the Cyber Perseu, the National Cybersecurity Exercise, promoted by the Portuguese Army, the CEPOL training course “Cross-Cutting aspects of cyberinvestigation – Cybercrime and cybersecurity” and the European Cyber Security Challenge, among many others.
Minsait offers its clients training as a service, so that they are not forced to incur costs related to purchasing equipment. It provides them with the maximum ease of use, scalability and flexibility according to the needs that they have at all times. In the military field, the Indra unit offers all the security guarantees to protect classified content and has a private cloud equipped with all the technical security measures.
