Article content

See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has given the public a small peek into a fake Alabama town used to train future agents.

Article content

Article content

The top law enforcement agency and domestic intelligence service in the United States revealed this week its Kinetic Cyber Range, which is housed inside a 6,700-square-metre building in Huntsville.

“This is about as real as it’s going to get before people go out in the field,” Dave Beachboard, who manages the indoor technical training facility built to resemble a small town, said on the FBI’s website.

Article content

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Play Video

Town designed for real world situations

There are houses, a hotel, power company, hospital, and a gas station wired with functioning systems, networks, and devices designed to behave as they would in the real world.

Beachboard said past training took place in classrooms with very little hand-on experience.

That changed after the facility opened in February 2025.

“In the past, you never left the classroom,” Beachboard said. “Everything was presented to you at your desk. You would process a cellphone or a piece of loose media, learn about servers. Everything was kind of theory-based, along with a little bit of hands-on.”

Since it opened, the facility has trained more than 1,400 agents, which includes FBI personnel and other agency partners.

For BeachBoard, the fake town is meant to bring realism to training.

“The systems that we have running in these facilities are just as real as the facade on the outside,” Beachboard said. “When they start diving into the network, they’re going to see active directory, email, firewalls — everything that’s typical of that venue.”

Article content

Article content

Lots of hands-on experience

One exercise involves students disassembling a vehicle’s interior, tracing wiring to its electronic controls, which could help reveal where it has been and who was behind the wheel.

Another scenario sees future investigators inside a home containing internet-connected devices. They must decide what to seize and what is left behind.

Elsewhere, training deliberately becomes more physical at a data centre.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Play Video

“I have a data centre that has over 200 servers running in it,” Beachboard said. “Some are running Windows, some are running Linux. So, a student gets to encounter what it’s like working in a data centre.”

Other training involves students conducting interviews with individuals acting as business owners, executives, and legal teams. They practice how to explain what they are doing and why during the mock investigation.

“Interviews are conducted ensuring the company understands what we are collecting, but, more importantly, what we are not collecting,” said Stephanie Cassioppi, who leads the cyber training unit in Huntsville.

Article content

Cyber investigations also part of training

Also part of the education is helping teach agents to follow digital activities across networks during cyber investigations.

“For us, our threat actors are overseas,” Cassioppi said. “The odds are I’m never going to get my hands on their computer or their phone.”

The students learn to trace the origins of an cyber intrusion, identify how malware spreads, and follow digital breadcrumbs which could take them across multiple systems and jurisdictions.

“Cyber is not just technical,” Cassioppi said. “It’s also practicing those soft skills, the dealing with people.”

Article content