It all started in 2009, in a small office at Masaryk University, with just a few IT experts, an old coffee machine, and a passion for cybersecurity. Over the years, our team CSIRT-MU was formed, we grew to more than 30 members, and we helped to solve hundreds of incidents, garnering expertise in the field.

As we progressed, our concern about society's dependence on IT was rising. We received calls from various organizations for professional help and witnessed the severity of the issue firsthand. A persistent long-term problem arose: the need for cybersecurity experts.

We contacted the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB) to propose creating a cyber range platform, allowing professionals to learn cybersecurity in practice. The dialog turned into the "KYPO" research project, funded by the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic in 2013.

The KYPO is an abbreviation for the project's official name, Cybernetic Polygon. In Czech, the word polygon means the training ground for some technology. This meaning is usual in the army.

We faced numerous obstacles in the project; however, in the end, we created a sophisticated virtual environment called the KYPO Cyber Range Platform (KYPO CRP).

In 2015, we successfully organized the first Czech technical exercise Cyber Czech, in cooperation with the NÚKIB powered by the platform. The aim was to prepare security personnel for work under the pressure of an ongoing massive cyber-attack. 

After this, we received the award of the Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic for security research.

Our successes led to the initiation of follow-up research and training activities. We trained hundreds of cyber security professionals and students using the KYPO CRP. 

We felt this was insufficient globally, so we decided to make the platform available as open-source software to allow any organization to download and use it to create training for their employees or students.

Thanks to the H2020 CONCORDIA project, we successfully released it to increase the availability of hands-on cybersecurity education in 2020.

Since that time, we have engaged in activities at the European level. As part of the cybersecurity competence pilot project, we have aimed our actions to boost European resilience.

The sign that our direction is right was the victory in the 7th edition of the European Commission's Innovation Radar competition in the Disruptive technology category in 2021.

We formed many new partnerships and promoted the platform a lot. Notably, we joined the REWIRE project to help create training for the European Cybersecurity Skills Framework and the CHESS project to transfer knowledge and cybersecurity training with Estonia.

However, we have also worked hard on the technology, resulting in several new platform versions bringing significant improvements. Even though the CONCORDIA project ended in March 2023, our initiative continues to pursue our mission.