Throughout Cyber Quest 2017, the Cyberoperations Enhanced Network and Training Simulators (CENTS) platform was an integral part of conducting Cyber operations and evaluating vendor capabilities based on Training and Doctrine (TRADOC) Capability Managers (TCM) requirements to meet U.S. Army capability gaps. The CENTS platform solutions provide a relevant, integrated, Live-Virtual-Constructive (LVC) cyber range environment for demonstration, training, exercising, tool development, and testing full-spectrum cyberspace capabilities.
For Cyber Quest 2017, the CENTS solution permitted closed-network engagements with multiple interconnected environments traversing a U.S. Army Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) Increment 2 infrastructure without negatively impacting Army Program of Record (POR) systems. The emulated elements of the environment (e.g. users, traffic, attacks, the Internet) interacted with the virtual and physical elements of the system providing real-time response (no pre-programmed responses) and events continued to run/impact the target until stopped by threat actors or mitigated by military role players.
By serving as both the enterprise infrastructure and attack environment, CENTS offered a powerful, realistic, risk-free simulated cyber-battlespace where Red Team operators tested response actions to routine, zero-day, and catastrophic events throughout the exercise. Using this platform, the Red Team was able to mirror real-world threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) to provide realistic threat dynamics and live, interactive scenario-driven events. The closed nature of the virtualized environment allowed detonation of live malware without risk to any critical systems or infrastructure, and without compromising any Army POR systems. Threat actors had the ability to dynamically reverse any persistent actions to a known-good state, preventing traditional system reimaging or associated downtime for military role players.