Visible to the public Powering Hands-on Cybersecurity Practices with Cloud Computing

TitlePowering Hands-on Cybersecurity Practices with Cloud Computing
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsZhang, Ruipeng, Xu, Chen, Xie, Mengjun
Conference Name2019 IEEE 27th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP)
Date PublishedOct. 2019
PublisherIEEE
ISBN Number978-1-7281-2700-2
KeywordsChameleon cloud, cloud computing, cloud-agnostic, cloud-based platform named EZSetup, Collaboration, Communication networks, composability, computer science education, computer security, cybersecurity education, Education, educational courses, hands-on cybersecurity practice, hands-on lab, Human Behavior, Metrics, multiple clouds, Policy-Governed Secure Collaboration, powering hands-on cybersecurity practices, private OpenStack cloud, pubcrawl, resilience, Resiliency, Scalability, science of security, security of data, specific virtual computing service provider, Tools, Virtual machine monitors, virtualisation, web services
AbstractCybersecurity education and training have gained increasing attention in all sectors due to the prevalence and quick evolution of cyberattacks. A variety of platforms and systems have been proposed and developed to accommodate the growing needs of hands-on cybersecurity practice. However, those systems are either lacking sufficient flexibility (e.g., tied to a specific virtual computing service provider, little customization support) or difficult to scale. In this work, we present a cloud-based platform named EZSetup for hands-on cybersecurity practice at scale and our experience of using it in class. EZSetup is customizable and cloud-agnostic. Users can create labs through an intuitive Web interface and deploy them onto one or multiple clouds. We have used NSF funded Chameleon cloud and our private OpenStack cloud to develop, test and deploy EZSetup. We have developed 14 network and security labs using the tool and included six labs in an undergraduate network security course in spring 2019. Our survey results show that students have very positive feedback on using EZSetup and computing clouds for hands-on cybersecurity practice.
URLhttps://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8888060
DOI10.1109/ICNP.2019.8888060
Citation Keyzhang_powering_2019