Cympire powers live-fire Cyber Yankee exercise

By AI, Created 6:06 AM UTC, May 29, 2026, /AGP/ – Cympire and Cyberspace Knowledge Group say their platform supported Cyber Yankee 2026 at Camp Nett in Connecticut, where hundreds of cyber operators trained against a simulated Fortune 500 network. The exercise tested multi-service readiness and highlighted demand for scalable cyber ranges that can handle large, realistic attacks.

Why it matters: - Cyber Yankee 2026 was designed to close the gap between routine training and the speed, scale and complexity of real cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. - The exercise put operators from multiple services, civilian agencies and international partners into a single live-fire environment. - The training aimed to improve detection, containment and recovery skills against persistent adversary campaigns.

What happened: - Cympire and Cyberspace Knowledge Group jointly announced that the Cympire Platform, also called CyWARIA, served as the cyber range for Cyber Yankee 2026. - The exercise ran May 4-15, 2026, at Camp Nett in Niantic, Connecticut. - Cympire and CKG delivered team and individual refresher modules that culminated in a live-fire simulation of a sophisticated adversary campaign against a Fortune 500 enterprise network. - Col. Cameron Sprague of the Connecticut Air National Guard served as exercise director.

The details: - Cyber Yankee is the National Guard’s premier regional exercise for critical infrastructure defense. - Hundreds of cyber operators participated from the Army National Guard, Air National Guard, the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Space Force, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard and civilian agencies. - National Guard participants came from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee. - International partners joined through the Department of War National Guard Bureau State Partnership Program and represented Cyprus, Brazil, El Salvador, Kenya, Paraguay, Uruguay, Canada and Sweden. - Civilian and interagency participants included 10 private industry companies, the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Energy and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. - Participants worked through more than 750 challenges and logged more than 5,000 hours of training inside the Cympire environment. - One scenario drew more than 150 simultaneous participants. - The platform supported hundreds of cloud instances, thousands of virtual networks and tens of thousands of vCPUs. - Exercise personnel practiced adversary engagement and defensive operations across detection, containment and recovery. - CKG is led by founder and President Richard Berthao, a retired Massachusetts Army National Guard colonel and founder of Cyber Yankee. - CyberProAI provided additional exercise support personnel alongside CKG. - Berthao said the training environment mirrored real adversary operations against critical infrastructure. - Yaniv Shachar, Cympire co-founder and CEO, said the platform was built for this kind of multi-service live-fire training.

Between the lines: - The selection of Cympire suggests the National Guard and partners wanted a range that could scale across services without breaking the realism of the scenario. - The mix of Guard, federal, state, private-sector and international participants points to a broader shift toward cross-sector cyber defense exercises. - The scale figures show the exercise was as much a stress test of training infrastructure as it was a test of operator skill.

What’s next: - Cympire said Cyber Yankee 2026 adds to a growing list of U.S. government engagements supported by the platform. - Cympire also pointed to ongoing federal and educational deployments. - CKG said its model is intended to support repeatable joint cyber exercise support nationwide.

The bottom line: - Cyber Yankee 2026 was a large-scale readiness drill that showcased how military, government and industry partners are using cloud-based cyber ranges to rehearse real-world defense at operational speed.