A Secure Environment to Measure and Manage Cybersecurity Lab Activities

Abstract

Implementation and management of a secure environment for online cybersecurity lab experiments is challenging for several reasons. In addition to normal issues associated with hardening a remote lab environment against unauthorized user access and network data transmissions leaking outside the lab environment, the very nature of cybersecurity lab experiments can be inherently dangerous. For example, management network traffic from lab activities may be sniffed using common cybersecurity utilities, the results of lab activity assessment might be hacked and modified, and IT devices used to analyze lab progress may be attacked and compromised. Finally, it is critical for academic integrity that student assessment is secure, assertable, consistent, and repeatable. The environment we created provides both educational processes and game based, hands-on exercises, where students can learn the concepts and best practices in cybersecurity defense as well as hands-on skills learning. An initial assessment was taken at a recent train-the-trainer workshop, and several lab learning and effectiveness metrics are provided.