If cyberwarriors are going to train like they fight, they need to have root. This is the founding principle of Carthage, and it leads to the following training outcomes:
Trainees become masters of the systems they protect. Every sysadmin knows that the best way to master a system is to hold daily responsibility for its basic maintenance. Carthage empowers users to hold this role over systems in a safe environment that teaches them modern DevOps tools and principles. And they do all of this work from the command line—the interface of a real-life cyberwarrior—rather than a gamified control panel or proprietary GUI. Because weapons training is only useful if you can bring those same weapons into battle.
Trainees can share and build upon each other’s work. Every Carthage module—VM, data set, and inject—is stored as a Git repository. These repos can be installed on any Carthage instance. Instead of throwing out your unit’s work after every exercise, you—along with every other cyber unit in the nation—are building the world’s most comprehensive cybersecurity asset inventory.
Unprecedented collaboration between experts. Cyberdefense is logistically messy. Experts work in cramped quarters to jointly defeat an attacker—but through the ungainly interface of a single screen. When combined with Photon, Carthage users can share the contents of their desktop with any other display in the enterprise. Participants can see other teammates’ work without leaving their desks. Photon also lets remote users persistently share control of mouse and keyboard inputs.
