100 Grace Hopper Ln
Augusta, GA 30901
Cyber Dawg Live-Fire Exercise
Event ended September 26, 2025
During this in-person training exercise at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta, participants actively respond to a cyber-attack in a controlled environment. Cybersecurity professionals sharpen their critical incident response skills. It's a high-pressure scenario without the real-world risks.
Strengthening Georgia's cyber readiness
GTA, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Defense, successfully hosted Cyber Dawg 2025, a live-fire cybersecurity exercise held September 22 - 26 at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center.
This year's event saw a record 129 participants from 33 organizations, marking a 23 percent increase over 2024. The defensive front line was composed of blue teams, largely state agency employees, operating across 11 simulated agency environments. Under continuous pressure from a sophisticated red team that emulated a well-documented nation-state threat actor, they were tasked with detecting, validating, and escalating suspicious activity.
Nearly two-thirds of the blue team members were first-time participants, underscoring Cyber Dawg's role in developing new talent. The red team's multi-phase campaign, ranging from social engineering and exploitation to lateral movement and controlled data exfiltration, provided realistic challenges that emphasized detection and analysis under pressure.
Key outcomes
- Agencies showed measurable progress in incident triage, log analysis, and alert validation.
- Intelligence sharing between the fusion cell and blue teams improved statewide situational awareness.
- The event accelerated the growth of Georgia's cyber workforce with a majority of new defenders.
Cyber Dawg 2025 reinforced Georgia's commitment to hands-on training and statewide readiness, providing state and partner organizations with tangible improvements that will enhance Georgia's defensive posture.
Date
Monday, September 22 / All Day to Friday, September 26, 2025 / All Day
More about Cyber Dawg
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Cyber Dawg is Georgia's premier live-fire cybersecurity exercise, designed to enhance cyber awareness, readiness, and response capabilities of participants. What began in 2019 as a small, ad-hoc exercise between the Georgia Army National Guard Cyber Protection Team (CPT 170) and the GTA Office of Information Security (OIS) has since evolved into a statewide, multi-agency cyber defense operation. Initially conducted on flyaway incident response hardware, Cyber Dawg has since grown to leverage the Cyber Range at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center (GCITC) in Augusta. Except for one year being held virtually, Cyber Dawg has been hosted at GCITC annually, increasing in complexity and scope each year.
Participants engage in real-world attack simulations, defending against cyber threats while working in teams to improve incident response skills.
Who participates?
Cyber Dawg is a joint initiative between GTA OIS and the Georgia Department of Defense (DoD). Participants include:
- State and local government - More than 20 state agencies and select, invitation-only participation from county and local agencies
- Military - Army and Air National Guard and active duty military units
- International - Cybersecurity professionals from allied countries
- Private sector - Select cybersecurity professionals and industry experts provide mentorship and technical support
What happens?
Cyber Dawg is a multi-day, live-action exercise where participants defend and work against advanced attackers. The exercise is designed to help participants identify cyber threats in real time, react to simulated breaches, and prevent damage and restore operations.
The event uses a complex sandbox environment with access to real-world internet traffic, including captured IP blocks from U.S. adversaries, such as Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, providing a real-world cyber threat landscape.
Exercise roles
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What's new in 2025?
This year's exercise will feature an advanced attack scenario. Blue teams must respond to a realistic cyber crisis involving compromised credentials, network intrusions, and nation-state tactics. The red team will conduct full-spectrum cyber operations against simulated agency networks, forcing defenders to adapt in real-time to evolving threats. Participants will work together to detect, analyze, and mitigate cyber threats in a high-pressure, real-time environment.
Cyber Dawg bytes
- Cyber Dawg provides a highly immersive training environment, ensuring that Georgia's state agencies and partners are well-prepared to defend against evolving cyber threats.
- The inter-agency collaboration strengthens information-sharing practices and enhances cyber threat intelligence among state agencies.
- After the week-long exercise, participants are better equipped with skills needed to respond to real-world cyber incidents.
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