PITTSBURGH, Pa.— Design Summit, the Fiscal Year 24 (FY24) Regional Cyber Center exercise, was held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA Dec. 5-8. The event served as a pivotal gathering opportunity for the Army’s RCCs and members of the cyber community. The summit was a collaborative effort focused on the development of virtual exercises designed to train and evaluate RCCs on their Army Mission Essential Tasks (METs) and the Cyber Security Service Provider (CSSP) Joint Mission Essential Task List (JMETL).
More than 30 participants engaged in the comprehensive three-day exercise event, which allowed all participants the ability to collaborate and gain a shared understanding of the modernized, diverse agenda. Discussions ranged from methodologies and cutting-edge technologies for enhancing exercise design to refining scenario event lists, cyber tasks, integration of intelligence teams, emerging threats, utilization of cyber tools, methods for performance measurement and other relevant topics.
An integral aspect of advancing cyber training capabilities was the collaboration between the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) G35 Training and Exercise Branch (TREX) and Carnegie Mellon University – Software Engineering Institute (CMU-SEI). Together, they developed the Gaining Cyber Dominance (GCD) program, offering a 24/7 virtualized training environment and nested facilitated collective training scenarios. This program has been instrumental over the past decade, conducting more than 350 collective training exercises for RCCs, Network Enterprise Centers (NECs) and Cyber Protection Teams (CPTs). These exercises have provided valuable collective cyber training and external evaluations, aligning with Army training and assessment requirements.
A cornerstone of the RCC training regimen is the Mercury Challenge cyber exercises, consisting of three distinct phases culminating in the Elite Mercury validation exercise. Facilitated by NETCOM, the Elite Mercury exercise serves as an RCC validation event, with the top-performing center earning the prestigious title of RCC of the Year.
The FY24 RCC Design Summit not only facilitated collaboration among key stakeholders in the cyber community but also highlighted the strides made in virtual exercise design, training environments and the ongoing commitment to excellence in cyber capabilities within the Army.
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