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Workforce Development

NREL is helping prepare the current and future workforce to mitigate cybersecurity risks in an evolving and complex energy landscape.

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The energy sector is rapidly evolving in response to market drivers, modernization, and energy resilience needs. To help cybersecurity workforces detect, respond to, and rapidly recover from threats, NREL offers specialized, hands-on training programs, promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing among key stakeholders, and facilitates mission rehearsal exercises for various critical infrastructure industries.

We bring decades of expertise in cutting-edge, advanced grid technologies to effectively prepare the current and future cyber workforce.

The ARIES Cyber Range Advantage

The Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) Cyber Range is a powerful tool for mission rehearsal and training in energy systems cybersecurity. It enables the simulation of current and future cyber threats, such as ransomware or denial-of-service attacks, allowing teams to practice identifying and responding to incidents in a controlled, realistic environment.

Capabilities

  • Custom "train like you fight" scenarios tailored to specific needs
  • Comprehensive cyber curriculum
  • Incident response drills
  • Post-training analysis and evaluation
  • Stress testing and validation of security systems
  • Threat simulations for identification, response, and mitigation exercises

Training and Exercises

NREL contributes to a variety of cyber defense exercises, including the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response's Liberty Eclipse program, CyberForce program, and Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems. These efforts promote energy sector cybersecurity preparedness and incident response, improve the nation's cybersecurity workforce, and support risk mitigation research and development.

Cyber Defense Exercises for Industry

In collaboration with Mastercard, NREL created an interactive visualization tool for a cyber defense exercise among six critical infrastructure companies. Using the ARIES Cyber Range, NREL can help corporations and utilities better visualize and interpret their cybersecurity data.

Tools

NREL has tools—such as the ARIES Cyber Range and the Distributed Energy Resource Cybersecurity Framework (DER-CF), Distributed Energy Resource Risk Manager (DER-RM), and the Distributed Energy Resource Visual Emulator (DER-VE)—to support facility owners in evaluating the cybersecurity health of their distributed deployments.

Work With Us

By partnering with NREL, utilities, industry, governments, and other stakeholders gain access to specialized expertise, a comprehensive suite of resources, tailored workforce development programs, and a collaborative cyber-physical emulation environment to prepare their workforces to respond to cyber threats. Learn more about how to work with us.

Contact

Sara Niehus

Manager, Cyber Mission Assurance Group

[email protected]


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Last Updated Sept. 25, 2025