VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - The Maryland Army National Guard’s Cyber Protection Team 169 led a certification exercise for other Army Guard cyber protection teams at the Virginia National Guard’s State Military Reservation, Aug. 3-16.
During the Cyber Velocity exercise, 20 Maryland Soldiers from Cyber Protection Team 169 strengthened the U.S. Army’s overall cyber readiness by assessing Georgia Army National Guard’s Cyber Protection Team 170 and Louisiana Army National Guard’s Cyber Protection Team 178, which includes Army Guard Soldiers from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Cyber Protection Team 169 began planning the exercise last October, building realistic training scenarios based on near-peer adversary attacks. The real-world simulations were designed to assess the cyber protection teams’ processes and procedures in mission-essential tasks under U.S. Cyber Command standards.
Maryland Army National Guard Chief Warrant Officer 2 Zachary Stipanovic, the project officer for the certification exercise, said the scenarios pushed the limits of the defensive cyber operators tasked with protecting the critical infrastructure of U.S. allies.
“By design, it's meant to be a little bit stressful,” said Stipanovic, who compared it to an infantry situational training exercise lanes where Soldiers have to react to enemy contact. “So it gets hairy when they have to interact with something that's happening on a network. They have to open those lines of communication and work on their processes. It's definitely a stressful situation, and it's hard, but they make it work. They are all doing a good job.”
Teams began with preparatory courses during the first week. The primary focus of Cyber Protection Team 170 and Cyber Protection Team 178 during the exercise was on conducting defensive cyber operations. They hunted and cleared adversary presence on coalition networks to enable hardening operations before transitioning support back to their allies. The teams leveraged intelligence to guide their missions and employed organic capabilities, including two assigned modular defensive cyber kits.
All the Maryland Soldiers of Cyber Protection Team 169 are Active Guard Reserve, or AGR, members who serve full-time to assess other cyber protection teams, which consist mostly of part-time Guard members. Since 2018, Cyber Protection Team 169 has performed initial validations for all other Army Guard Cyber Protection Teams and about 50% of the recertifications, which occur every five years.
“The Army has to know you can do your job before you are sent to the public for a mission,” said Maryland Army National Guard Sgt. Joel Wolfpitts, a cyber operations noncommissioned officer. “We have to validate all of our sister teams to make sure they are good to go out in the world and conduct cyber defensive actions. We have the expertise to provide this service for the Army as a whole.”
The Soldiers of Cyber Protection Team 169 were divided into three teams: red team, white cell and validators. The red team acted as the adversary, conducting cyberattacks on the allies’ network. The white cell comprised the exercise planners and Soldiers who acted as the allies, also known as the customers in the scenarios. The validators regularly monitored the performance of the Soldiers from Cyber Protection Team 170 and Cyber Protection Team 178 throughout the exercise.
At the same time as the Cyber Velocity exercise, the Virginia Army National Guard’s 91st Cyber Brigade assessed the readiness of the 127th Cyber Protection Battalion during exercise Cyber Fortress, held in nearby facilities at the State Military Reservation. The 127th Cyber Protection Battalion is composed of Army National Guard Soldiers from Indiana, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Cyber Fortress exercised how military and civilian cyber operators in enclaves would respond to and mitigate a cyber attack to test Virginia’s cyber response plan.
Near the end of both exercises, Virginia Army National Guard Col. Gerald Mazur, commander of the 91st Cyber Brigade, presented challenge coins to four Soldiers from the Cyber Protection Team, or CPT, 169, and thanked the entire team for their continued support.
“CPT 169 is an integral part of the 91st Cyber Brigade because their mission is to certify the 10 other cyber protection teams in the brigade,” Mazur said. “They’re the steady force that brings their technical skills. So without their support and the hard work that they do, we wouldn’t be able to certify our CPTs to the joint standard to perform Title 10 federal missions.”