Abstract

The Ohio Cyber Range Institute (OCRI) was created in 2017 after a partnership was formed between the University of Cincinnati and the Ohio Department of Higher Education. The goal of the OCRI is to provide a virtual environment alongside education modules for students and teachers in both K12 and higher education formats and to create cyber exercise opportunities for students and professionals in the cybersecurity industry.The Ohio Cyber Reserve (OhCR) was created by the Ohio Collaboration Committee (OC3) to improve cybersecurity within the state to protect the state government, critical infrastructure, businesses, hospitals, and the grassroots citizens of Ohio. The OhCR is a volunteer force trained to assist municipalities with cybersecurity vulnerabilities and to provide recommendations to reduce cyber threats.We will conduct an exercise alongside the Ohio Cyber Range Institute (OCRI) and Ohio Cyber Reserve (OhCR) to develop OpFor vs. Blue Cyber Exercise capabilities, vet processes to identify gaps and opportunities for refining Cyber Incident Response (IR), and to promote this capability as a state asset. This exercise will be conducted by the OCRI to deliver cybersecurity incident response training for the OhCR and to develop processes for future OpFor vs. Blue exercises. Cyber exercises are important to run to verify that responses are occurring in an expected manner. This was the first exercise run by the Ohio Cyber Range and Ohio Cyber Reserve to test the OHCR and show them how they can start to improve their readiness and IR processes going forward.