US And Australia To Develop Shared Cyberattack Training Platform

The United States and Australia have signed a first-ever bilateral agreement that allows the U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and the Information Warfare Division (IWD) of the Australian Defense Force to jointly develop and share a virtual cyber training platform.

The two countries’ departments of defense will achieve this by incorporating IWD’s feedback into USCYBERCOM’s simulated training domain known as the Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE).

“This project arrangement is a milestone for U.S.-Australian cooperation. It is the first cyber-only arrangement established between the U.S. Army and an allied nation, which highlights the value of Australia’s partnership in the simulated training domain,” U.S. signatory Elizabeth Wilson said.

“To counter known and potential adversarial threats, the Army has recalibrated our strategic thinking; we’ve made smart decisions to refocus our efforts to invest in the new, emerging and smart technologies that will strengthen our ability to fight and win our nation’s wars.”

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The new approach drastically reduces the time needed by U.S. and allied cyber forces to develop joint virtual training platforms which previously took months for every specific scenario.

PCTE now provides a collaborative training platform that USCYBERCOM, IWD, and allied forces (including but not limited to Five Eyes intelligence partners) can re-use and develop while training individually and in collaboration.

“The long-term goal for PCTE is to provide the DOD cyberspace workforce the capability to build and conduct full-spectrum, combined and joint cyberspace training, exercises, certification, and mission rehearsal in a training environment,” USCYBERCOM said.

“The training environment requirements, driven by training objectives and user-defined specifications, must emulate a realistic operational environment that provides scope, scalability, and fidelity.”

This virtual training range was launched in February 2020 as a component of the U.S. military’s Joint Cyber Warfighting Architecture and it is a secure and distributed reconfigurable environment that allows multiple independent cyber training activities to run at the same time.

It enables defense department operators to practice their skills within closed realistic operational environments that emulate live networks.

The Cyber Training Capabilities Project Arrangement signed today by Australia and the US “is an example of how the cyber mission forces of the U.S. and Australia work together and showcases success in the Armaments Cooperation,” USCYBERCOM added.

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“The project arrangement, valued at $215.19 million over six years, provides the flexibility to develop cyber training capabilities for the future.”