GAME mellow beach culture belies the full-scaleThis type of scenario is similar to dozensrun every week at the newly opened BoeingInformation Security Innovation Lab inHuntington Beach, Calif., where the town’s ON BY DAVE GARLICK blue team, or attacker versus defender,The lab itself isn’t much to look at: acomputer-based battles playing out in thevirtual world inside the lab.room full of desktop computers connectedto several racks of servers in a back area.But here, engineers can create realisticmultiple-layer virtual networks in computer“cyberspace” to help them develop cyberoperations. Customers run red team versusHuntington Beach labtests scenarios tohelp defend againstcyberattacks NGreat Basin Desert. and data centers against attack.scenarios to test their organization’snetwork infrastructure and operator skillsand to find ways to harden their networkso one, other than top military commanders, knows much about the nondescriptbuilding surrounded only by yucca plants and cactuses in the middle of Utah’s Guarding the concrete power-generating facility is, for the most part, uneventful. “We’re providing solutions to help Cameras are everywhere: wide-angle wall cams; a robotic camera trundling along customers gain the advantage against its programmed routes between gates and around buildings; scores of outside eyes the growing cyberthreat,” said Per Beith, monitoring the building’s perimeter. director of Information Security Solutions. Then it happens. An explosion rocks the building. The sounds of gunfire echo off walls. In the above-described scenario, the Boots pound up the stairwell leading to the control room monitored by one armed guard. bad guys broke into the network, took Static alerts crackle from his two-way radio. As alarms wail, the guard’s eyes scan a bank control of several key cameras and of computers when he suddenly realizes what has happened. The cameras monitoring the inserted false video imagery. They used east gate have been hacked, their electronic control systems and signal tampered with. that opening to slip in under the defenses Luckily, there’s the reset button. No buildings were blown up, no lives were lost. and raid the facility. 18 BOEING FRONTIERS / DECEMBER 2012–JANUARY 2013
Frontiers December 2012/January 2013 Issue
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