The Use of Cyber Ranges in the Maritime Context

Abstract

A good defensive strategy against evolving cyber threats and cybercrimes is to raise awareness and use that awareness to prepare technical mitigation and human defence strategies. A prime way to do this is through training. While there are already many sectors employing this strategy (e.g., space, smart buildings, business IT) maritime has yet to take advantage of the available cyber-range technology to assess cyber-risks and create appropriate training to meet those risks. Cyber security training can come in two forms, the first is so security professionals can raise their awareness on the latest and most urgent issues and increase defence skill levels. The second form is directed at non-security professionals (e.g., ship builders, crew) and the general public, who are just as affected by cyber threats but may not have the necessary security background to deal with the issues. Conducting training programmes for both requires dedicated computing infrastructure to simulate and execute effective scenarios for both sets of trainees. To this end, a cyber range (CR) provides an environment for just that. The purpose of this paper is to use studies on the concept of cyber ranges to provide evidence on why the maritime sector should embrace this technology for maritime-cyber training, and envision how they will provide maritime training and risk assessment to combat tomorrow’s threats.