Kansas National Guard cybersecurity team travels to Nebraska for Cyber Tatanka exercise

Nine Soldiers from the Kansas Army National Guard's cybersecurity team attended Cyber Tatanka June 1-15 at Kiewit Hall, Nebraska University School of Engineering in Lincoln. More than 200 Soldiers from various military units took part, including a team from the Republic of Armenia. The goal of the event was to hone existing skillsets and add new cyber tools to their experience.

"The event has been in the planning stages since last fall," said Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Sampson, noncommissioned officer in charge. Andrew said the planning was largely done by himself and Maj. Matthew Sevcik. "I coordinated the logistics and made sure that the team members were enrolled properly."

In addition to Sampson and Sevcik, other members of the Kansas cyber team were Capt. Angela Stevens, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Lee Sanders, Sgt. Gage Kern, Sgt. Johnathon Lenfestey, Sgt. James Pennington, Sgt. Desirae Smith, and Sgt. James Tyrell.

The Armenian team consisted of Col. Aram Gevorgyan, Capt. Davit Gharibyan, Senior Lt. Sergey Mkrtchyan, Senior Lt. Davit Sargsyan, and Pvt. Eduard Noramiryan. The Kansas National Guard has been partners with the Republic of Armenia since 2003 under the State Partnership Program.

"We developed a pretty good relationship with the Armenians, who were quite active on the keyboards with us," said Sampson. "The language barrier was not an issue as many of the Armenians spoke English."

The first week of the event was spent in classroom instruction.

"Most soldiers were in two-day classes covering specific aspects of cyber security," said Sampson. "Two soldiers were in the Operational Training Environment course put on by the Vermont Regional Training Institute. It covered incident response planning and implementation as part of a cyber team."

Sampson said the second week was the actual event, which consisted of two or more different attack scenarios each day.

"Each scenario was basically a forensics exercise," said Sampson, "determining the width and depth of the intrusion, compromised hosts, accounts, etc."

Sampson said the event was a valuable training and networking experience for all the Soldiers involved.

"I made invaluable contacts from other state cyber teams, and I saw my Soldiers grow in confidence when learning a multitude of new skills," Sampson said. "Events like this allow us to see both our strengths and our areas of opportunity. They also help when mapping out future training for both seasoned Soldiers and new team members."

Sampson said the cybersecurity unit will be looking for new members in the near future.

"My understanding is that in October the Defensive Cyber Operations will be converting to a Cyber Protection Team and will have several Cyber Operations Specialist slots that will need to be filled."

Anyone interested in joining the Cyber Protection Team may contact Sampson at 913-680-9594; email [email protected]

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