Cympire powers live-fire cyber defense training at Cyber Yankee 2026

By AI, Created 1:36 PM UTC, May 26, 2026, /AGP/ – Cympire says its CyWARIA cyber range supported Cyber Yankee 2026, the National Guard’s premier regional exercise, during a May 4-15 event at Camp Nett in Connecticut. The exercise brought together hundreds of operators from U.S. military branches, civilian agencies and international partners to practice defending critical infrastructure against a simulated enterprise network attack.

Why it matters: - Cyber Yankee 2026 tested how well multi-service and civilian cyber teams can respond to a realistic attack on critical infrastructure. - The exercise also showed whether a single training environment can support large-scale, joint operations across military, government and industry users. - Cympire’s role signals demand for cyber ranges that can mimic enterprise networks and sustain live-fire defense training at scale.

What happened: - Cympire announced that its Cympire Platform, also called CyWARIA, provided the cyber range for Cyber Yankee 2026. - The exercise ran May 4-15, 2026, at Camp Nett in Niantic, Connecticut. - The event ended with a live-fire simulation of an enterprise network attack on a Fortune 500 company. - Cyber Yankee is the National Guard’s premier regional exercise for critical infrastructure defense.

The details: - Hundreds of cyber operators participated from Army National Guard and Air National Guard units, 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, including Cyprus, Brazil, El Salvador, Kenya, Paraguay, Uruguay, Canada and Sweden. - Civilian and interagency participants included ten private industry companies, the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Department of Energy and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. - Participants used more than 750 challenges and logged more than 5,000 hours 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 during the exercise. - Exercise personnel practiced adversary engagement and defensive operations against a persistent cyber campaign targeting critical infrastructure. - Cympire delivered the exercise with Cyberspace Knowledge Group, 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. - Col. Cameron Sprague of the Connecticut Air National Guard said Cympire’s CyWARIA environment had the fidelity needed for training and could respond quickly to immediate changes. - Berthao said the exercise needed a training environment that mirrors the speed, scale and complexity of real adversary operations against critical infrastructure. - Cympire Co-founder and CEO Yaniv Shachar said Cyber Yankee is a benchmark for joint, multi-service cyber readiness against sophisticated threats.

Between the lines: - The exercise format underscores a shift from classroom-style training to operator-level, live-fire simulations that stress coordination under load. - The mix of military, civilian, utility and international participants points to cyber defense as a cross-sector mission rather than a purely military one. - Cympire’s emphasis on scale suggests the company is positioning CyWARIA as infrastructure capable of supporting major government exercises, not just smaller training events.

What’s next: - Cympire said Cyber Yankee 2026 joins a growing roster of U.S. government engagements supported by the Cympire Platform. - The company also said its platform continues to support federal and educational deployments. - The exercise partnership model could be repeated in future National Guard and joint cyber events if agencies keep prioritizing large-scale, realistic training.

The bottom line: - Cyber Yankee 2026 served as a high-stakes stress test for both cyber defenders and the training platform behind them, with Cympire claiming the scale and fidelity needed for joint critical-infrastructure defense.