LINCOLN, Neb. – Cyber Tatanka 2026, a massive cybersecurity exercise designed to test and strengthen the digital defenses of critical infrastructure, concluded June 12 after two weeks of simulated, highly sophisticated cyberattacks.
The fifth annual exercise brought together 243 participants from federal, state, military and private sector organizations at Kiewit Hall on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. The June 1-12 event served as a collaborative proving ground for defensive cyber operations.
"Cyber Tatanka is Nebraska's premier defensive cyber range exercise," organizers noted in planning documents, highlighting its mission to safeguard regional networks against emerging threats.
“When this started five years ago Cyber Tatanka was a military-led event,” said Brig. Gen. Robert Hargens, Nebraska Air National Guard assistant adjutant general. “It has since transformed into a civilian-led event. There’s an incredible amount of planning and work that goes into doing this event, so I want to thank Cyber Strong Nebraska for putting this on.”
The importance of the cyber realm is echoed in the exercise’s name. Tatanka is a word used by members of the Lakota tribes to describe the bison that ranged across a seven-state region of the central and northern American Great Plains, said Ryan Carlson, a retired Nebraska Army National Guard major. Carlson helped develop the original exercise concept with several leaders of Nebraska public infrastructure organizations to give cyber defense specialists an opportunity to learn more about network protection efforts and collaborate with fellow computer and network defense specialists, while also testing their organization’s cyber response plans in a safe yet realistic virtual environment.
“The indigenous people relied on the bison for their way of life. It was their food. It was their shelter. It was their clothing. It was their tools,” Carlson said. “It was something they greatly respected, and it was something they realized they needed to protect to support their way of life.”
“We see interconnected systems as kind of that same thing,” Carlson added. “Interconnected systems are extremely important to maintaining our way of life. And they are something that we must protect.”
The exercise is led by Cyber Strong Nebraska, a nonprofit organization established to plan and conduct it. The Nebraska National Guard participates in and supports the Army’s Innovative Response Training program and is one of several major partners, including multiple private, public and educational institutions.
The first week of the event focused heavily on academic training and network validation. The second week shifted to a live-fire range phase hosted on a simulated business enterprise network provided by Cloud Cyber Range. Defensive teams faced daily vignettes with threat actors that grew progressively more sophisticated.
“The person is the program,” said Dana Turner, a director for Cyber Strong Nebraska. “If you’re not stress-testing your people on realistic conditions on a regular basis, you have no idea how they will perform when it actually matters.”
The exercise drew key international partners through the Department of War National Guard Bureau State Partnership Program. Two service members from Tanzania and one from the Czech Republic integrated into the defensive enclaves to collaborate and share best practices with the Nebraska National Guard teams.
The exercise's participating countries included the United States, Austria, the Czech Republic, Jordan, Chile and Tanzania. Domestically, attendees spanned five states and territories: Texas, Colorado, Vermont, Nebraska and Guam.
“Seeing the threats in real time and going through the tools that we have together has helped me understand it better,” said Czech Armed Forces 2nd Lt. Jakub Richder, an exercise participant who graduated last year with a master’s degree in the cyber defense field and joined the Czech’s 92nd Cyber Warfare Group. “This has been a great experience, seeing how another military works and how they communicate. This experience will definitely help me come back home as a better cyber soldier.”
A broad coalition of Nebraska infrastructure and business pillars anchored the civilian side.
“Nation states used to go after each other's military targets and government systems,” Turner said. “That has shifted. They now go after utilities in small Nebraska towns, the regional hospital, the corner pharmacy, the community bank. The target set has expanded to include everyone, people who never signed up to be on the front lines of a geopolitical conflict.”
“You cannot defend a threat landscape that broad with a single organization, a single organization or chain of command, you need a coalition,” Turner added.
During its five-year run from 2022 to 2026, Cyber Tatanka has trained 750 military, civilian, academic and government professionals. That cohort includes 250 U.S. military personnel and more than 50 international allied military personnel.
“We are stronger together than we are apart,” Turner said. “Cyber Tatanka is the answer to that problem.”