JYVSECTEC, the IT institute of JAMK University of Applied Sciences, has established an advanced cyber security research, development and training environment which delivers the most important cyber security exercises in Finland. Nodeon is developing the environment in cooperation with JYVSECTEC so that it can also host simulations of cyber security incidents related to automation environments.
JYVSECTEC’s Realistic Global Cyber Environment (RGCE) is a highly advanced environment simulating the internet and its actual structures and services. Among other things, the environment includes the core services of the internet (public IP addresses, domain name and time services, the certificate infrastructure, the interworking nodes of operators), the internal networks of organisations, cloud and data centre services, web services, social media, online banking, electronic currency, and the possibility to generate network traffic, which is crucially important to cyber security exercises, producing realistic user and malware traffic.
The simulation of the Helsinki–Tallinn tunnel produced by Nodeon on display at JYVSECTEC’s exhibition stand at the Cyber Security Fair.
Jyvsectec was looking for a partner to implement automation simulations in the cyber security enviroment
In 2016, JYVSECTEC began to search for a partner for the development of the cyber security environment. The goal was to build an automation system simulation in the environment that could be incorporated into the future cyber security exercises organised by JYVSECTEC.
Nodeon’s diverse experience in the implementation of automation systems and extensive ICT know-how in software, data communications and information security convinced JYVSECTEC to partner up with Nodeon in the project.
As a result of the development work, we implemented, with the help of genuine SCADA products and PLC devices, a simulation of a tunnel’s traffic management and power distribution system in the RGCE. The simulation allows for modelling threats related to the systems and an assessment of organisations’ capabilities in serious cyber threat situations. The system has been used frequently as part of the cyber security exercises of large Finnish organisations in which the system allows for simulating the tunnel infra site’s connections to other nationally critical infrastructure, such as the national power distribution grid.