Army Reserve soldiers train in cyber defense operations

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/123583/army-reserve-soldiers-train-cyber-defense-operations

By Capt. Addie Randolph
DVIDSHUB.net
FORT DIX, NJ, US
04.01.2014

FORT DIX, N.J. -- Once a year, five battalions belonging to the Army 
Reserve Information Operations Command come together from across the U.S. 
to participate in their annual training. This year the training took place 
March 22-29 at Fort Dix, N.J.

Just over 200 soldiers participated in the training event, said Lt. Col. 
John Coiro, ARIOC brigade operations officer. The training allowed the 
soldiers of the ARIOC to hone their military occupation specialties in 
cyber defense operations as well as give them valuable training in other 
areas.

The five areas of concentration for this year’s training revolved around 
dynamic defense, forensics, computer network defense service provider, 
incident handling, and threat analysis. Subject matter experts in these 
areas were chosen from each battalion to lead the training.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sunny Ramos, a dynamic defense analysis from the 
Western Information Operations Command, based out of Camp Parks, Calif., 
was tasked to teach a class on Kali Linux, an operating system designed 
for digital forensics and penetration testing.

"I chose to teach the tool cobalt strike, an advance penetration testing 
tool, using Kali Linux as the operating system," said Ramos. "It wasn't 
too difficult as I was exposed to that tool last year when I participated 
in the National Security Agency’s Cyber Defense Exercise."

Sgt. Leonardo Brown from the WIOC has been working with AT&T U-verse 
Internet Services for 12 years as a network security engineer in his 
civilian capacity.

In his civilian job, Brown deals with the security aspect of cyber defense 
and watches for intrusions to his company’s network. This requires him to 
analyze and understand they different ways people are hacking his 
employer’s network.

Once Brown dons his military uniform his role changes from security to the 
forensics. This allows him to delve deeper and see what artifacts were 
left behind, what actually hit the system as well as what information was 
taken.

“My jobs both civilian and military complement each other greatly. The 
security aspect of my civilian job allows me to see the before and the 
forensics aspect of my military job allows me to see the after,” Brown 
said.

Not only did the soldiers participate in their military occupational 
specialty training, but they also focused on soldier skills helping to 
ensure readiness for their rotational deployment in support of South West 
Asia Cyber Center.

ARIOC leadership is placing emphasis on preparing for the transition from 
their current mission in Cyber Training to the new Cyber Protection Teams. 
The command is working hard to develop advanced cyber training plans that 
rapidly advance the cyber skills across the brigade to support new 
missions.

When you have geographically dispersed units they tend to train in a 
vacuum. The benefit of getting all of these educated, skilled, and 
qualified individuals together if that they can learn from each other, 
said Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Blackard, noncommissioned officer in charge of 
the Master Cyber Trainer Detachment. They see they have similar 
constraints that impede their progress and are able to work collectively 
to over come these constraints to be better mission capable.

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