During the academic year 2021/2022 the students of the V.V. Popovskyy Department of Infocommunication Engineering of the Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics, studied at the state-of-the-art RangeForce cyber training facility, access to which was provided as part of the USAID Ukraine Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Project.

RangeForce is an interactive cloud-based cybersecurity skills development platform containing real security tools, real infrastructure elements, real threats and almost all attacks. The RangeForce platform covers the entire spectrum of cybersecurity levels, from beginner to expert, including security operations (SOC), DevSecOps, WebAppSec, PenTesting, etc.

So, during this academic year, our students have spent more than 6,500 hours on the platform, mastered 32 courses and 22 additional modules, including SOC Analyst, SIEM systems, IBM QRadar, Splunk, Endpoint Security, IDS/IPS, Firewall Policies and many others.

The best knowledge and high activity showed the following students:
Group KУІБ-19-1: Roman Kapusta, Oleksiy Zatoskin, Serhii Khrystenko, Olena Yevsiukova, Angelina Pashkova;
Group KУІБ-19-2: Dimitriy Reznichenko, Daniil Andreas, Dmytro Shedin.

Review by Roman Kapusta, a third-year student of the Kharkiv National University of Radioelectronics, studying in the educational program "Information Security Management" (specialty 125 "Cybersecurity"). "In this course in the spring semester I had the opportunity to work at the cyber training ground "RangeForce", so I want to share my own impressions after working with it.
Personally for me, it was the first such platform that would have such a great functionality and list of features. Convenient and clear interface, with nothing unnecessary, helps you quickly find the right module. The topic of each course is clear and interesting, the goals and objectives are clearly spelled out, allowing you to understand why you need to use this or that tool. In addition to thematic modules, the platform tracks certain achievements of students and gives them marks in their account. This approach encourages students to complete as many modules as possible to gain knowledge, introducing a competitive spirit with friends in the number of special achievements. The topics of each of the modules help learn certain aspects of cybersecurity, as well as provide up-to-date practical knowledge in the use of the tools just learned. All tasks are performed in remote virtual machines that contain all the necessary tools to perform the tasks. This allows you to visually perform this or that attack without compromising personal data. In general, I am very satisfied with the experience of using the RangeForce platform, so I will continue to work in this direction with great pleasure, performing more and more complex tasks to gain the latest knowledge and ultra-modern practical skills.

And that's just the beginning! Next year we are planning more courses, more modules, and more hands-on skills!
Thank you to the USAID Ukraine Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Project for such a great opportunity to enhance students' skills and train already experienced professional cybersecurity specialists!