Continuous Mission Rehearsal for Allied Nations: How Federated Cyber Ranges Build Cross-Border Resilience

The Challenge of Global Cyber Defense

In today’s complex and interconnected world, governments worldwide face sophisticated cyber threats that carry the risk of compromising national security and disrupting essential services and critical infrastructure. Modern adversaries are continually weaponizing AI, which has resulted in attacks becoming more frequent and sophisticated. To counter these evolving threats, allied governments must constantly seek ways to improve their cybersecurity posture, enhance threat detection capabilities, and strengthen cooperative response strategies.

The readiness of national networks, intelligence, and missions must be proven, not assumed. Relying on static training, untested tools, and unvalidated processes is insufficient against an AI-fueled threat landscape. Traditional exercises often lack the necessary realism required to simulate cyber warfare effectively. This mandates a shift toward Continuous Mission Rehearsal (CMR).

The Mandate: Continuous Mission Rehearsal (CMR)

Continuous Mission Rehearsal (CMR) moves beyond periodic exercises to ensure continuous readiness and resilience. SimSpace was founded on the conviction that cyber readiness and resilience require continuous mission rehearsal and adaptation.

For Ministries of Defense and Federal Agencies, SimSpace enables nations to ensure this continuous readiness by allowing federal cyber defenders and AI agents to continually practice under real-world cyber conditions. Active defense relies on continuous testing, not luck.

SimSpace provides a platform where international defense and civilian agencies can:

• Train: Sharpen skills and build muscle memory through intelligent individual and team exercises.
• Test: Continuously test tools, threat intelligence, and configurations to evaluate performance under realistic conditions.
• Validate: Stress-test processes, such as incident response, disaster recovery, and compliance, to uncover gaps.

By unifying training, testing, and validation in one environment, SimSpace allows organizations to advance continuous readiness and ensures defense, intelligence, and command teams all operate at peak performance before sophisticated zero-day attacks occur.

The Solution: Federated Cyber Ranges for Allied Collaboration

SimSpace is the ideal choice for Allied Government entities of NATO or similar international security alliances, which require large-scale cyber defense programs and multi-agency collaboration on cybersecurity. SimSpace provides the realistic, intelligent cyber range necessary to strengthen teams, processes, and technologies and help governments outsmart adversaries before the fight begins.

1. Cross-Border Federation and Joint Exercises

The ability to collaborate securely across borders is crucial for allied defense. SimSpace helps allied governments by enabling the federation of networks across nations.

• SimSpace enhances international security coordination with federated cyber ranges.
• This capability allows international teams to train, test, and validate cyber readiness across international governments using joint exercises and shared network capabilities.
• This results in integrated coordination for stronger mutual resilience.
• SimSpace specifically facilitates NATO-aligned multinational cyber exercises and cross-border operational cybersecurity training.

2. Realistic Threat Emulation and Policy Validation

The SimSpace Cyber Range Platform provides a production-grade environment where agencies can conduct simulated active defense under live-fire conditions.

• This includes the ability to conduct nation-state attack simulations and emulate advanced persistent threats (APTs).
• Cyber operators can refine individual, agent, and team coordination, and validate escalation playbooks.
• SimSpace helps allied governments validate whether their policies, procedures, and technology hold up under simulated stress. This is essential for aligning frameworks across networks for measurable, evidence-based governance.
• The platform allows teams to test and prove readiness against industry frameworks, including NIST 800-53 and Zero Trust models.

Case Study in Action: Strengthening Trust Across National Borders

The power of continuous mission rehearsal and range federation was recently demonstrated by the Ministries of Defense for Slovenia and Croatia.

The Challenge

To improve their national cyber defenses, Slovenia and Croatia needed to conduct large-scale, joint cyber exercises across national borders. This required a shared cyber range that provided a realistic simulation of their respective production systems. They aimed to provide SOC analysts with realistic scenarios and simulate stealth and disruptive threats beyond traditional phishing vectors.

The Federated Solution

Using SimSpace’s federated cyber range capabilities, Slovenia and Croatia enabled cross-border collaboration by creating a federated range between the two nations. The SimSpace cyber range was an air-gapped, on-premise environment that offered a realistic simulation of their production systems.

The Results

SOC teams participated in live-fire joint simulations, responding to sophisticated custom threats. The realism of the environment was paramount: participants reported that the SOC “could not tell the difference [between range and real environment],” and SOC teams reported “no difference” between the SimSpace federated cyber range and their production environment.

The result was significantly enhanced readiness, stronger international trust, and a foundation for broader collaboration across Europe. Aleš Čretnik, Slovenian Cybersecurity Lead, stated that the joint exercises not only improved our defenses, but also strengthened trust and collaboration between our nations.

Confidence Through Proven Validation

For Allied Governments, achieving resilience is a continuous process built through realistic practice and measurement. SimSpace enables this crucial cycle of continuous mission rehearsal:

• It accelerates operational readiness and national cyber standards.
• It improves coordination, decision-making, and response time within organizations and nations.
• It forges trust through live exercises.

By leveraging the SimSpace Cyber Range Platform, allied governments can safeguard their digital ecosystems and build a more resilient cyber defense framework. This continuous validation and training ensures that security is proven through performance, providing the confidence needed to win the battle before the fight begins.

SimSpace allows allied nations to treat readiness like a constantly maintained infrastructure, ensuring that every firewall, procedure, and human operator is stress-tested together, just as a national grid relies on every component working seamlessly during peak demand.

To see your international government cyber range in action, schedule a demo with SimSpace.