DARPA Builds Cyberwar Virtual Firing Range

Amid the onslaught of cyber attacks striking both public and private sectors, the federal government has pooled its offensive efforts into the National Cyber Range project, an initiative that will boost cyber-defense technologies and help train a cybersecurity workforce, Reuters reports.

Together with companies such as defense contractor Lockheed Martin and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is building a virtual firing range in cyberspace, where researches can get a “realistic, quantifiable assessments of the nation“™s cyber research and development technologies,” according to DARPA factsheet.

Made up by testbeds that can conduct independent tests, or be integrated into one or more larger testbeds, the NCR will allow researchers to measure their progress in either a classified or unclassified environment, against appropriate threats, with adequate timeliness and accuracy to allow for corrections and identify new capability needs, the DARPA release said.

The project cost an estimated $130 million, and is expected to be fully operational by mid-2012. It will also help train cyber warriors such as those working for the U.S. Cyber Command, Reuters reported.