VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – A significant cyber certification exercise led by the Maryland Army National Guard’s Cyber Protection Team 169 took place at the Virginia National Guard’s State Military Reservation from August 3 to 16.
The Cyber Velocity exercise involved 20 Soldiers from Cyber Protection Team 169 working diligently to bolster the overall cyber readiness of the U.S. Army. Their efforts included evaluating the Georgia Army National Guard’s Cyber Protection Team 170 and the Louisiana Army National Guard’s Cyber Protection Team 178, with participants from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
Planning for this comprehensive exercise began in October of the previous year, and it incorporated realistic training scenarios that reflected the complexities of near-peer adversary attacks. The simulations were meticulously designed to evaluate the participating cyber protection teams’ processes and data defenses under the strict standards set forth by U.S. Cyber Command.
Maryland Army National Guard Chief Warrant Officer 2 Zachary Stipanovic, who served as the project officer for the exercise, elaborated on the intention behind the challenging scenarios. He indicated that the exercises were analogous to infantry situational training that demands soldiers react to enemy contact.
“By design, it’s meant to be a little bit stressful,” Stipanovic stated, emphasizing the need for defensive cyber operators to protect critical infrastructure effectively.
“It gets hairy when they have to interact with something that’s happening on a network. They have to open those lines of communication and work on their processes. It’s definitely a stressful situation, and it’s hard, but they make it work. They are all doing a good job,” he added.
The initial week of training involved preparatory courses aimed at equipping Cyber Protection Team 170 and Cyber Protection Team 178 for their primary focus on conducting defensive cyber operations. They undertook operations to hunt and eradicate adversary presence on coalition networks, facilitating hardening operations before transitioning support back to their allies.
In these efforts, the teams utilized intelligence to guide their missions, integrating organic capabilities that included two assigned modular defensive cyber kits.
All members of Cyber Protection Team 169 are Active Guard Reserve (AGR) soldiers who serve full-time roles to conduct assessments of other cyber protection teams, primarily composed of part-time Guard members. Since 2018, Cyber Protection Team 169 has conducted initial validations for all further Army Guard Cyber Protection Teams as well as around 50% of the required recertifications occurring every five years.
“The Army has to know you can do your job before you are sent to the public for a mission,” stated Maryland Army National Guard Sgt. Joel Wolfpitts,
who is a cyber operations noncommissioned officer. “We have to validate all of our sister teams to make sure they are good to go out into the world and conduct cyber defensive actions. We have the expertise to provide this service for the Army as a whole.”
The Soldiers of Cyber Protection Team 169 were organized into three distinct groups: the red team, the white cell, and validators. The red team executed cyberattacks simulating adversarial actions against the allies’ networks, while the white cell included exercise planners and Soldiers who represented the allies during these simulations.
The validators played an essential role in monitoring the performance of the Soldiers from Cyber Protection Team 170 and Cyber Protection Team 178 throughout the entirety of the exercise.
Coinciding with the Cyber Velocity exercise were concurrent assessments of the Virginia Army National Guard’s 91st Cyber Brigade. This included a thorough evaluation of the 127th Cyber Protection Battalion as part of another operation, Cyber Fortress. This nearby exercise aimed to test Virginia’s cyber response plan by assessing how military and civilian cyber operators would manage and mitigate a cyber attack within designated enclaves.
As both exercises reached their conclusion, Virginia Army National Guard Col. Gerald Mazur, the commanding officer of the 91st Cyber Brigade, presented challenge coins to four Soldiers from Cyber Protection Team 169. He expressed his gratitude for their unwavering support and performance.
“CPT 169 is an integral part of the 91st Cyber Brigade because their mission is to certify the 10 other cyber protection teams in the brigade,” Mazur remarked, emphasizing their critical role in upholding the technical standards needed for effective operations.
“Without their support and the hard work that they do, we wouldn’t be able to certify our CPTs to the joint standard to perform Title 10 federal missions.”
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