What it is
CyberSim is a web application that runs interactive cybersecurity tabletop exercises. Participants work through realistic threat scenarios in real time — responding to simulated attacks, making decisions under pressure, and developing practical awareness of how digital risks unfold in their type of organization.
It was designed for the groups that face real consequences: political parties, parliaments, election monitoring teams, and civil society organizations operating in environments where digital security matters.
Deployment and use
CyberSim is in active use (as of 2025). Current deployments include the National Civic League/Aspen Institute and Freedom House. It has been used across a range of international contexts.
The primary project home is cybersim.app (coming soon). This page covers CoCitizen's stewardship of the public version.
Origin and credit
CyberSim was created by RisingStack as part of a project managed by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), with funding from Microsoft, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the National Civic League. Two members of the CoCitizen team were part of the original project.
CoCitizen's role
CoCitizen is the steward of the public CyberSim project. The original upstream is no longer actively maintained. We have:
- Taken on management of current deployments
- Made significant core improvements enabling multi-game deployments
- Rebuilt deployment documentation to make self-hosted instances practical
RisingStack is currently under separate contract making further improvements to the codebase.
License
GNU General Public License v3 (GPL-3.0). Use it, fork it, adapt it — keep the attribution and license intact.
Code
Get involved
We welcome contributions: code, documentation, issue reports, deployment feedback. Open an issue on GitHub or write to contact@cocitizen.com.