Cyber Leadership Meeting 2024

Written by Kristen Burton | Photos by Eric Stelter

What is Cyber Lucrezia? We all wondered. Depending on whom you ask, Lucrezia is either the patron saint of espionage, or an Italian restaurant in northwest Indiana. From December 7 – December 11, 2024, it was a real-world simulation of a cyber-attack conducted within the walls of the UW-Whitewater University Center. 

Dr. Balaji Sankaranarayanan, Information Technology & Supply Chain Management (ITSCM) Professor and Director of the UW-Whitewater Cybersecurity Center for Business (CCB), worked with Dr. Eric Franco, Cybersecurity Preparedness Director for Wisconsin Emergency Management, to bring military and emergency management personnel from across the Midwest to UW-Whitewater for the Cyber Lucrezia exercise.

The planning started in January 2024. The facility for the event needed to meet specific requirements to accommodate 150 people accessing a cyber-range on the military’s network. This required wired connections for all of the laptops to ensure consistent bandwidth and avoid issues encountered with WiFi use. UW-Whitewater’s University Center was selected as the venue in May. IT Services, under the leadership of Sara Deschner, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer, ensured that technological capabilities in the University Center were up to date to accommodate the event.

On Saturday, December 7th, members of the 127th Cyber Protection Battalion from the Indiana Army National Guard, led by Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Frater, arrived on campus to set up the training rooms, check connectivity, and get the general lay of the land. On Sunday, December 8th, representatives from the Wisconsin Army National Guard’s Defensive Cyber Operations Element and trainers from Security Onion led a pre-exercise training session. The battle officially kicked off on Monday, December 9th at 9:00 am. The offense, or Red Team, conducted a three-day assault on traffic lights, water utilities, county and city networks, and released ransomware on those networks. The joint exercise provided real world experience in real time to cybersecurity professionals from the Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota National Guard units. The Blue Team, or defense, works to discover the Red Team’s tactics and tries to mitigate the effects. The simulation is as real as it gets; to heighten the reality of the experience, the Red Team’s activities impact an actual town, and the Blue Team has visual confirmation of that impact, such as reservoirs draining and prison doors opening.

After the exercise concluded, the two teams met to discuss their results. Red Team noted the network’s vulnerabilities, how they bypassed the defenses (perhaps through a phone that wasn’t protected with VPN), their strategies for causing havoc, and the malware and ransomware they loaded. For the Blue Team, it was an opportunity to talk to their Red Team counterparts about the effectiveness of their responses.

The partnership of the CCB was crucial for ensuring appropriate infrastructure to conduct the exercise and to build awareness in the community and among UW-Whitewater students of cybersecurity needs and employment opportunities. During the Distinguished Visitors Meeting held in Hyland Hall on December 10th to brief army leadership on the Cyber Lucrezia exercise, Dr. Sankaranarayanan discussed the role of the CCB and its focus on three areas: education, research, and outreach.

Making sure students receive an excellent education in cybersecurity is the CCB’s primary goal, and to that end, the curriculum includes competitions and hackathons. Dr. Roger Yin, also a professor with ITSCM at UW-Whitewater, and Dr. Sankaranarayanan are dedicated to improving cybersecurity not only for the community at large, but to provide a pipeline for our students to train for and fill positions in the industry. 
The partnership with Wisconsin Emergency Management provides more opportunities for our students and develops the next generation of cybersecurity professionals to keep our businesses and institutions safe from cyber threats.

More about the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater College of Business and Economics (CoBE):

The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater College of Business and Economics (CoBE) is Wisconsin’s largest business college. It is home to the #1 ranked online, single school Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program in the State and is the only college in Wisconsin that offers an AACSB-accredited Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) degree program. CoBE is in the top 2% of the world’s business schools having earned both AACSB and AACSB Accounting Accreditation. More information available on the College of Business and Economics website or email cobe@uww.edu.