Tuesday, March 11, 2025
CVTC offers cybersecurity drills, training to local IT professionals
Is your business ready for cybersecurity training? CVTC is ready to offer training for IT professionals. For more information, contact Ken Pearson.
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Chippewa Valley Technical College is ready to battle cyberattacks, one class of local information technology professionals at a time.
The College hosted cyber range pilot events in the past with people from a handful of local industry partners. IT professionals worked together to solve mock cyber security attacks facilitated in CVTC’s new computer lab.
Nick Wu, a network engineer for the city of Eau Claire and CVTC alumnus, said he had participated in cybersecurity tabletop exercises before, but never something in a cyber range.
“The lab was in line with my expectations of being more technical focused and hands-on,” Wu said.
The CyberBit platform used in CVTC’s cyber range gives users realistic scenarios of cyberattacks to recognize and work through as a learning opportunity.
Stephen Casselman, CVTC IT instructor, said the goal of the cyber range pilot events is to help IT professionals find the hacker intrusion. He said it gives people the opportunity to help each other down the trail to discover how the intrusion happened. Putting all of their knowledge together to solve the problem is crucial, he said.
Wu said it was clear as soon as the cyber range event at CVTC began, that the participants would have to work together to find a solution to the cyberattack.
“Working together and delegating tasks was important to be able to finish on time and work through the issue presented,” Wu said. “Early struggles included the unknowns and figuring out everyone’s skillsets.”
As he contemplated the drill, Wu said all IT professionals should have some background in cybersecurity, because “it’s not a matter of if, but when” a cyberattack will happen.
“I believe it would be a value to any organization … to be able to send their technical team to these types of trainings to prepare for any incidents that will occur,” he said.
