This article explains what Events are in Cyber Ranges, how to create and configure them, and how to manage scoring, documentation, and participants.
What are Events?
Events within the Cyber Ranges platform are CTFs, exams, hiring assessments, or other activities that support external access to ranges and other platform content.
Since Events allow external user access, they're capped at a 30-day maximum duration. There are no hard caps on the number of users or teams that can participate.
Note: Event Scaling
If your Event has a Range Template associated with it and there are over 100 teams participating, please reach out to info@snaplabs.io with your estimated event size before the event to avoid potential range limit issues.
Creating an Event
How to Create an Event
To create an Event, you need an Admin role within your customer account. Navigate to the Events > Manage Events tab and select Create Event. You'll be prompted to fill in some information about your event. The following fields are mandatory:
- Name
- Start Date
- End Date
The following fields are optional:
- Description
- Image
- Range Template
Be descriptive and succinct with your Event Name and Description. These appear in the Event card and are intended to give users a quick overview of what the event is. You can include more detailed descriptions and instructions in the Event Documentation.
The Range Template is an optional event attribute. You can associate any of your range templates with your event to let participating teams launch that range template and take part in hands-on activities during the event. Ranges are launched in the event creator's account, and the event creator is responsible for any associated runtime costs. Event participants have "Student" role access to the systems within the range once it's deployed.
You can change any of these values after the event has been created.
Scoring
Events can support objectively scored components, such as tasks, for assessments or other competitions. Scoring is submitted and viewed entirely within the Cyber Ranges platform. Once you've created an event, you can optionally create tasks for it. To create tasks, navigate to the Scoring tab from within your event.
Creating Tasks
A task within an event has three attributes:
- Name — the title of the task, or the question to answer
- Value — the "answer" to the question or static task value to be submitted
- Points — a measure of how valuable the task should be
Tasks can be created, edited, or deleted at any time after creating an event. Once an event has at least one task associated with it, participants will see a Scoring tab where they can submit tasks and view the scores of other participating teams.
Documentation
An event has specific Documentation that participants can view as soon as they're invited to the event. If your event has a Range Template associated with it, this will default to the range's documentation. Otherwise, a default documentation template will be presented for you to edit.
Event Documentation is editable during the event to support live updates, and can include arbitrary files.
Participants
The last thing your Event needs is some participants. To invite participants and manage team assignments, navigate to the Participants tab within your event.
Inviting a Participant
Inviting an event participant works much like inviting a user to your account. Add the participant's email and select Invite.
Participants can be existing Cyber Ranges users or new to the platform. New users will be prompted to create an account before accessing the event details.
Managing Teams
Within the Participants tab, event administrators can create Teams and assign participants to them. Participants without a team will participate as individuals.