Circadence Improves Advanced Cyber Learning with New Features in Project Ares®

BOULDER, Colo., Dec. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybersecurity readiness market leader, Circadence Corporation, announced today that Project Ares®, its gamified cyber learning platform, is now implemented as a fully cloud-native architecture on Microsoft Azure. The redesigned foundation for Project Ares provides improved speed of load times for cyber training exercises, scalability with increased number of concurrent users, and browser-based access to new learning curriculum developed for cyber job roles and industries. These advancements provide enhanced opportunity for comprehensive cyber learning and specialized skill building that can positively impact an organization's overall security posture.

Project Ares provides hands-on cybersecurity education for beginning cybersecurity analysts to seasoned professionals. Circadence works to advance and adapt their flagship product to meet the growing enterprise and industry demands in cyber training and education. With the learning platform now running on cloud architecture, Circadence can develop cyber learning curriculum that will become even more customized, scaled, accessible and relevant to support the persistent learning of today's cyber professionals.

"We're thrilled to release these latest capabilities in Project Ares to take advantage of Microsoft Azure performance and scalability so that we can strategically enhance cyber learning like never before," said Michael Moniz, CEO and Co-founder of Circadence.

On its new cloud-native foundation, the capability of Project Ares extends, now offering:

• Performance capacity for over a thousand concurrent users, a significant jump from previous 250 player capacity.
• Broader geographical flexibility so that trainees can log into Project Ares across the globe and access training quickly.

Also announced today is the new Circadence portal, CyberBridge, which enables new curriculum access controls for Project Ares. Through CyberBridge, access to Project Ares training exercises can be tailored for individual users or groups of users. Additionally, the CyberBridge single-sign-on support enables easy access to future cyber learning solutions from Circadence.

The combination of increased scalability and capacity of Project Ares and curriculum access control creates a solution that effectively spins up cyber ranges with built-in learning exercises for teams and enterprises of any size. 

Proven success at Microsoft Ignite
At the recent Microsoft Ignite conference (November 2019), more than 500 security professionals had the opportunity to use the enhanced platform. Conference participants set up CyberBridge accounts and then played customized battle rooms in Project Ares. Microsoft cloud-based Azure security solutions were integrated into the cloud-based cyber range to provide an immersive "cloud-in-cloud" sandboxed learning experience that realistically aligned to phases of a ransomware attack. The new version of Project Ares sustained weeklong intensive usage while delivering on performance. 

Curriculum Enhancements: Splunk®, Scripting and Election Security
Cyber curriculum needs to continuously expand to keep up with industry vulnerabilities therefore, Circadence is also poised to deploy a new mission scenario and new battle room exercises to follow this Project Ares update.

With the 2020 election season starting soon, the new Mission 15 scenario called Operation Raging Mammoth: Protect from an Election Attack gives the learner experience defending a voting terminal network under attack and monitoring voting collection processes to detect unauthorized use or activity.

New battle rooms – teaching Splunk configuration and PowerShell cmdlet basics – will shortly become part of the Content Library on this new version of Project Ares. 

• Two new exercises will focus on installing and configuring Splunk software to assist IT and security teams to get the most out of their security tools by enabling log aggregation of event data from across an environment into a single repository of critical security insights.
• A new scripting exercise will teach cmdlet (pronounced command-lets) basic commands using PowerShell, a command line (CLI) scripting language developed by Microsoft to simplify automation and configuration management.

Circadence embraces all the capabilities the cloud provides and is pleased to launch the latest version of Project Ares that furthers our vision to provide sustainable, scalable, adaptable cyber training and learning opportunities to professionals so they can combat evolving threats in their workplace and in their personal lives.

About Circadence
Circadence Corporation is a market leader in cybersecurity readiness. Powered by a culture of innovation and the demands of an evolving cyber landscape, Circadence offers award-winning cyber range solutions and cybersecurity learning platforms, running on Microsoft Azure, that leverage artificial intelligence and custom content to address critical security challenges for enterprise, government and academic institutions. Circadence's solutions deliver persistent, immersive and true-to-life experiences that match and adapt to contemporary threat environments. For more information, visit www.circadence.com.

SOURCE Circadence Corporation

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