Abstract

The explosive growth of IT infrastructures, cloud systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) have resulted in complex systems that are extremely difficult to secure and protect against cyberattacks which are growing exponentially in complexity and also in number. Overcoming the cybersecurity challenges is even more complicated due to the lack of training and widely available cybersecurity environments to experiment with and evaluate new cybersecurity detection and protection methods. Therefore, the goal of our research is to address the education, training, and experimentation challenges of the cybersecurity by exploiting cloud services. In this paper, we present the design, analysis, and evaluation of a cloud service, that we refer to as Cybersecurity Lab as a Service (CLaaS), which offers virtual cybersecurity experiments that can be accessed from anywhere and from any device (desktop, laptop, tablet, or mobile device) with Internet connectivity. In CLaaS, we exploit cloud computing systems and virtualization technologies to provide virtual cybersecurity experiments and hands-on experiences on how vulnerabilities are exploited to launch cyberattacks, how they can be removed, and how cyber resources and services can be hardened or better protected. We also present our experimental results and evaluation of CLaaS virtual cybersecurity experiments that have been used by graduate students taking our cybersecurity class as well as by high school students participating in GenCyber camps.