Persistent Cyber Training Environment Industry Day set for Nov. 1

[ALT]), Army Cyber Command and Second Army (ARCYBER & 2A), and US Cyber Command.

This industry day is two parts: the morning session will provide an overview of the PCTE requirement and concept of operation to support the receipt of white papers recommending technical solutions. The afternoon session will initiate a Cyber Innovation Challenge for a specific technology that supports the PCTE training. The event is open to industry, government, academia, as well as science and technology.

Registration information is available at the Association for Enterprise Information’s website.

PCTE is a training platform that allows cyber mission forces to train in emulated network environments utilizing current cyber tool suites. The PCTE supports both individual and team training, in addition to large scale exercise and experimentation via a distributed close network across multiple classifications.

The evolution of the platform will largely focus on integration of available applications, enabling increased automation to ultimately support multiple simultaneous training events. At maturity, the DoD joint PCTE will be a constellation of federated, interoperable common training capabilities enabling full spectrum training from individual competencies to the team, unit, group and force training exercises, TTP development, and mission rehearsal.

Currently, the DoD uses a combination of loosely affiliated or independent virtual environments that lacks the automation necessary to establish and maintain persistent and scalable training environments. Previous analysis efforts have detailed gaps associated with PCTE event planning, event management, training assessment, restoration of the training environments, and automated opposition force.

The future of PCTE includes the development and evolution of new capability solutions focused on improving the timeliness and effectiveness to meet the requirements of fully functional cyber mission forces.

A Request for Information (RFI) was issued on Oct. 17, requesting white papers providing possible technical solutions, capabilities, and critical cost/schedule drivers related to the PCTE. The full submission requirements for this RFI can be found at the this link.

The Cyber Innovation Challenge requirement for the afternoon session will be released to the members of the Command, Control, and Communications in Cyberspace (C5) Consortium (c5technologies.org) utilizing Other Transaction Authority (OTA) as the vehicle to promote increased small and non-traditional industry engagement with Government. Selected industry partners from the consortium will be invited to demonstrate their system with training content provided by the government. This Cyber Innovation Challenge will focus specifically on an unclassified training platform as part of the larger PCTE platform.

There is limited space available at this event so all interested parties should register as soon as possible at the registration link provided below. Attendees must provide government issued identification upon arrival. Check in starts at 0800. Foreign Nationals may not attend this event. Registration link.

Day Two Will Feature One-on-One Sessions 

Attendees will also have the opportunity to participate in a 20-minute one-on-one session with the Government Project Management Office on Nov. 2, 2016 from 9 a.m. to noon and from 1 to 4 p.m. These one-on-one sessions will take place on the same campus as the Industry Day with specific locations to be provided after sign-up. Please sign-up for the one-on-one session by contacting Mr. Brian Serra, brian.d.serra.civ@mail.mil.

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING PARKING: Due to limited parking in the Partnership II/III parking lot, all visitors must park in the large parking lot on the corner of Science Drive and Technology Parkway. The Partnership II/III parking lot is authorized parking for occupants only. Also, do not park in the AT&T parking lot as your car will be subject to being towed.