Turning Knowledge into Practice — What Can You Learn with a Cyber Range and SudoRange?

In cybersecurity, there is a significant difference between knowing something and being able to do it in practice. A Cyber Range provides a safe environment in which learners can try operations, attacks, defence and investigation. This article explains the role of a Cyber Range and how SudoRange can be used to connect knowledge with practical learning.

What is a Cyber Range?

A Cyber Range is an environment designed for safely carrying out cybersecurity operations and exercises.

You cannot freely attempt attacks or configuration changes against normal business systems or services on the public internet.

But to understand cybersecurity properly, practical experience is important, including:

• investigating networks
• examining logs
• changing configurations
• investigating vulnerabilities
• seeing how attacks work
• applying defensive measures
• analysing what happened

A useful way to think about a Cyber Range is as:

an experimental environment where it is safe to make mistakes.

Some things cannot be understood by reading alone

If you read about a Firewall in a book, for example, you may be able to explain it as:

“a mechanism that permits or blocks communications according to rules.”

But when you actually examine:

• which communications are passing through
• which ports are open
• what happens when a rule is changed
• what is recorded in the logs

the quality of your understanding changes.

The same applies to Web security, Linux, forensics, network analysis and many other areas.

In cybersecurity, it is important to:

move back and forth between Knowledge and Practice.

This is why Cyber Hiroshima places importance on Cyber Ranges.

What is SudoRange?

Cyber Hiroshima uses SudoRange, a cloud-based Cyber Range provided by the UK company SudoCyber, as a practical learning environment.

The specification describes SudoRange as providing more than 2,000 hands-on labs across a wide range of areas, including:

• Networking
• Security
• Ethical Hacking
• Forensics
• OSINT

Because it is cloud-based, learners can enter practical exercises without individually building a large server or network environment of their own.

The important point is not to use it simply as:

“a website for solving challenges”.

It should be used as an experimental environment in which learners can test the knowledge they have acquired.

Linking CyBOK and SudoRange

At Cyber Hiroshima, a central part of the learning design is the flow:

Learn with CyBOK → Practice with SudoRange

Suppose, for example, that you study the CyBOK Network Security Knowledge Area.

After developing an understanding of concepts such as:

• network protocols
• security boundaries
• Firewall
• Network Monitoring
• attack and defence

you can move on to a related practical exercise.

Once you begin working with the system, new questions may appear:

“I thought I understood this, but I do not know what I am looking at when I see the packets.”

“My understanding of the relationship between ports and services was unclear.”

At that point, return to CyBOK and other learning materials.

Repeat the flow:

Knowledge → Practice → Review → Learn Again

The specification also sets out an approach for mapping CyBOK Knowledge Areas to SudoRange exercises so that learners can move from:

knowledge → practice → review → the next stage of learning.

A Cyber Range is not only a place to “learn attacks”

The term Cyber Range may bring penetration testing or Ethical Hacking to mind.

But attack techniques are not the only things that can be practised.

For example:

Blue Team

activities can develop the ability to observe logs and communications, identify abnormal behaviour and respond to it.

Digital Forensics

can be used to investigate what happened from the data left behind.

OSINT

can help learners understand how publicly available information can be collected and evaluated.

Basic network and operating-system exercises can also be valuable for people who are only beginning cybersecurity.

A Cyber Range is therefore not simply “a place to practise advanced hacking”.

It is a learning environment in which people from beginners to specialists can turn knowledge into practical activity.

There is value in failure

In practical exercises, you may not be able to solve a problem immediately.

From a learning perspective, however, that experience has value in itself.

The important question is:

“Why could I not do it?”

Did you not know the command?

Did you not understand how the network worked?

Were Linux permissions unclear?

Did you lack knowledge of Web authentication?

Once you identify the knowledge you are missing, you can see what you need to learn next.

A Cyber Range is therefore not only an environment for demonstrating capability.

It is also a place to discover:

what you do not yet understand.

Turning knowledge into something you can “do”

The purpose of learning cybersecurity is not to memorise large numbers of terms.

What matters is being able to use knowledge when it is needed and think about:

“What is happening?”

“Where should I investigate?”

“What should I check?”

Cyber Hiroshima is working to develop a Learning Loop in which learners:

understand the overall structure through CyBOK,

try things in practice with SudoRange,

and then learn again from what they did not understand.

Once you have gained knowledge, the next step is to use it.

That is the first step in moving from:

“knowing” cybersecurity to being able to “do” it.

5. Read Next

Where Should You Start with Cybersecurity? — A Learning Path for Beginners

An introduction to a learning route from the fundamentals towards practical experience.

Practice with SudoRange

Cyber Hiroshima’s approach to using SudoRange for practical cybersecurity learning.