The CYBER.ORG range was created with one goal in mind, to bring equity in Cybersecurity education across the United States. We know how important equity in education can be, we know how hard it is to accomplish this across the country. It becomes an even bigger task to accomplish whenever technology is involved since there are over 100,000 schools in the United States. The CYBER.ORG Range started with a task in mind of getting the range to less than $20 per month for a teacher; we are excited to announce that the cost of the range is going to be completely free for all K-12 educators and students in America.

CYBER.ORG’s Cybersecurity course was launched in early 2020 and aligned to CompTIA’s Security+ objectives, this CTE course allowed all schools in America to have access to a free curriculum that helps get students real-world cybersecurity experience. Teachers and students had access to all the materials, but the hands-on labs required a cyber range. While CYBER.ORG wrote the content to be range agnostic, all labs written to work on different types of ranges, teachers were still having trouble being able to get a cyber range that worked for their classroom and budget.

In late 2021, CYBER.ORG started developing a cyber range that could be scaled nationwide at a low cost to all educators, with teachers in Louisiana, Arizona, Utah, and Nebraska testing the platform in their classrooms. Then, in 2022, the state of Louisiana funded the development of the CYBER.ORG Range so that all students in Louisiana would have access to a cyber range and all other states would have a low-cost option of a range. A few months later, CISA approved funds to be used to cover the cost of the CYBER.ORG Range for all other states that would be using the range. The CYBER.ORG Range’s Beta pilot goes live on October 15th, with an official launch on January 1st, 2023. All educators and students across the United States will have access to a free curriculum and a free cyber range that gives students hands-on real-world cybersecurity experience starting January 1st!