Common questions
answered

CCS is an operational cyber wargaming platform designed to help organizations practice and improve their response to cyber incidents. Unlike technical cyber ranges that focus on individual skill development, CCS trains organizational teams - from technical staff to executives - in coordinating their response to complex, multi-faceted cyber attacks. It provides a realistic, scenario-based environment where organizations can strengthen coordination, test procedures, and build resilience without the risks of real incidents.

Traditional cyber ranges teach how to perform specific technical tasks - forensic analysis, malware investigation, SOC procedures. CCS teaches what to do in a given situation, training organizational coordination and decision-making under pressure across all levels. It models the full landscape - infrastructure, security controls, business processes, and people - and simulates at scale without requiring full system emulation.

Tabletop exercises discuss scenarios in theory. CCS makes participants live them - with evolving technical events, time pressure, and incomplete information. Decisions have real consequences in the simulation. The complete structured data log enables objective After-Action Review instead of a discussion of what you think happened. It's the difference between discussing a flight emergency and practising it in a simulator.

Building the cyber landscape typically takes: small organizations 1–2 weeks; medium 2–3 weeks; large 3–5 weeks. Once the landscape exists, each new scenario takes 1–2 days to prepare. The exercise itself runs in 3–6 hours. For repeat exercises, only a new scenario is needed - the landscape is reused.

Yes. CCS is designed for distributed participation across departments, cities, or countries. Remote coordination is itself a training objective. The integrated messaging system captures all communication with simulation timestamps. Participants can be in the same room or on different continents.

No. A representative model is sufficient. A bank with 100 branches might model 10–15. CCS's validation tools ensure your model is functionally complete. Certain technical details - firewall rules, user accounts, system configurations - matter for realism, but full duplication of every system is never necessary.

Yes - and for organizations with suitable expertise, that's often the best approach. Those who design the exercise should not participate as players to maintain integrity. Initial exercises require the most effort; once the landscape is built, subsequent exercises need only a new scenario. Utilis provides training and ongoing support for organizations building internal capacity.

CCS supports organizations in meeting exercise requirements under both directives - but the goal is genuine readiness, not just a compliance checkbox. All exercise data is recorded in structured format, giving organizations the documented basis needed to satisfy auditors. More importantly, the teams that go through CCS exercises are actually better prepared to respond when a real incident occurs.

CCS can simulate virtually any cyber attack type: ransomware, data breaches, supply chain compromise, insider threats, APT multi-stage campaigns, DDoS, zero-day exploitation, and business email compromise. Scenarios can model documented APT group TTPs, be based on threat intelligence, or address custom attack paths specific to your risk profile.

CCS exercises can be configured for any combination of participants - from focused technical drills to full organizational response including C-level leadership. Typical participants include: incident managers, IT/OT security teams, SOC analysts, business process owners, legal and compliance, communications and PR, and CIO/CISO/CEO. The composition depends on the exercise objectives.