The Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), together with the Georgia Department of Defense, recently held Cyber Dawg 2025, a week-long cybersecurity exercise at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in Augusta. The event took place from September 22 to 26 and brought together 129 participants from 33 organizations, which is a 23 percent increase in participation compared to the previous year.
The exercise involved blue teams made up mainly of state agency employees who worked across 11 simulated agency environments. Nearly two-thirds of these participants were taking part in Cyber Dawg for the first time, highlighting the event’s role in developing new cybersecurity talent.
A red team acted as adversaries by simulating the methods used by advanced nation-state hackers. Their activities included reconnaissance, social engineering, exploitation, covert command-and-control, lateral movement, and data exfiltration. The blue teams had to detect and respond to these attacks in real time, supported by an intelligence fusion cell, a group of subject matter experts known as the gold team, and technical support from a range team.
The main goal of Cyber Dawg 2025 was to improve detection and analysis skills under pressure, requiring fast decision-making and cooperation among agencies. According to organizers, the exercise provided practical training that helped identify improvements to strengthen Georgia’s cyber defenses.
“Cyber Dawg 2025 reaffirmed Georgia’s commitment to practical, hands-on training. By simulating realistic adversary behavior in a safe environment, the state identified actionable improvements that will directly strengthen Georgia’s defensive posture.”
