Case Study: Argonne National Laboratory scales cyberdefense training and saves over $100,000 with Microsoft Corporation Azure

National lab inspires next generation of cyberdefenders using scalable Azure solution

Argonne National Laboratory wanted to expand its annual CyberForce collegiate cybersecurity competition, but its on-premises servers couldn’t support growth to multiple locations in an easy or cost-effective way. To help bring more students into real-world cyberdefense training and career networking, Argonne turned to Microsoft Corporation’s Azure platform, including Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Active Directory, and Azure Policy.

Microsoft Corporation’s Azure solution gave Argonne the scalable cloud infrastructure needed to host the competition and provide each team with multiple VMs. The lab saved more than USD 100,000, increased VM access from only two or three per team to seven, and grew the event to more than 100 teams and 600 competitors across 10 labs, making CyberForce one of the largest competitions of its kind in the United States.

Argonne National Laboratory