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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