THE CYBER DEFENSE EXERCISE: AN EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION ASSURANCE EDUCATION

The US Military Academy at West Point issued a challenge to the five United States service academies to participate in an inter-academy Cyber Defense Exercise (CDE). This exercise was initiated and implemented by faculty and cadets assigned to the US Military Academy, West Point, with funding and direction provided by the National Security Agency. The concept of defending the network was derived to evaluate cadet skills and the effectiveness of the Information Assurance (IA) education invoked at West Point. The Cyber Defense Exercise served as the final project for senior-level Computer Science majors enrolled in the Information Assurance (IA) course. The IA - Service Academy Group for Education Superiority (IA-SAGES), a group formed to plan, develop and share IA curriculum, proposed that all US service academies teaching an IA course participate in the exercise. The US Air Force Academy and US Military Academy accepted the challenge to compete in 2001. The distributed facility in which this exercise will be conducted is known as the Cyber Defense Network (CDN). It was designed and developed by a West Point cadet (student) team, and is an extension of the Information Warfare Analysis and Research (IWAR) Laboratory. To understand the function of the CDN, it is necessary to understand all the resources at the disposal of USMA for IA education. The IWAR Laboratory is an isolated laboratory used by undergraduate students and faculty researchers at the US Military Academy. It is a production-like, heterogeneous environment and has become a vital part of the IA curriculum at West Point. The military range analogy is used to teach the students in the class that the exploits and other tools used in the laboratory are weapons and should be treated with the same care as rifles and grenades. This paper describes the structure of the laboratory and how it is used in classroom instruction. It describes the process used to create the IWAR and the Cyber Defense Exercise (CDE). Finally, this paper describes the concept of the 2001 Cyber Defense Exercise and expectations for future participation.