Cloud Mimic Network Sandbox for Safe Cyber-Attack Wargaming
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional cybersecurity systems struggle to effectively simulate and respond to cyber threats in a manner that mimics real-world enterprise environments, lacking the ability to test and train incident response without impacting actual networks.
Innovation Solution
An automated sandbox generator for a cyber-attack exercise on a mimic network in a cloud environment, comprising a cloud deployment component, an attack engine, a monitoring component, and a user interface, which creates a clone of an organization's network in the cloud, deploys cyber threats, monitors interactions, and provides real-time feedback for training and response.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a sandbox environment is created to simulate cyber threats, then safety and realism of threat simulation are improved, but device complexity and resource requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a mimic network that is a copy of the organization's actual network infrastructure, including cloned virtual machines, network devices, and configurations. This copy allows realistic threat simulation without risking the real network, as the sandbox environment replicates the target system's structure and behavior patterns.
Solution Approach 2:
The sandbox environment is segmented into isolated components including separate virtual machines, network segments, and containment boundaries. This segmentation allows the system to simulate threats in isolated zones that cannot affect the main network, while still maintaining realistic network topology and device interactions.
2Adaptability or versatility
If a clone of the organization's network is deployed in the cloud, then realistic testing of incident response is improved, but cloud deployment resources and time requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by automatically provisioning and configuring the mimic network in the cloud before threat simulation begins. The cloud deployment component pre-establishes the sandbox environment with all necessary virtual machines, network devices, and security controls, so that incident response testing can commence immediately without manual setup delays.
Solution Approach 2:
The sandbox creator and cloud deployment component operate autonomously to self-provision the mimic network resources. The system automatically retrieves network configuration data, spins up virtualized infrastructure, and configures the sandbox environment without requiring manual intervention, thereby reducing deployment time and enabling rapid incident response testing.
3Measurement precision
If AI models are trained on normal network behavior patterns, then detection accuracy of cyber threats is improved, but computational resources and training time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and isolates normal network behavior patterns from the organization's actual network traffic data during a baseline period. By separating normal behavior from anomaly detection tasks, the AI models can be trained more efficiently on curated datasets rather than processing all raw network traffic, reducing computational overhead while maintaining detection accuracy.
Data Source
AI summary
An automated sandbox generator for a cyber-attack exercise on a mimic network in a cloud environment can include various components. The cloud deployment component deploys the mimic network in a sandbox environment in the cloud environment. The mimic network can be a clone of components from a network that exists in an organization's environment and/or, predefined example components. The attack engine deploys a cyber threat to use an exploit for the wargaming cyber-attack exercise in the mimic network. The user interface displays, in real time, results of the wargaming cyber-attack exercise being conducted in the sandbox environment, to create a behavioral profile of how the cyber threat using the exploit would actually perform in that particular organization's environment as well as have human users interact with the cyber threat deployed by the attack engine during the cyber-attack on the mimic network, as it happens in real time, during the wargaming cyber-attack exercise.