Computer security is a critical issue that affects our everyday life. For this reason, most colleges and other educational institutions are devoting an increasing amount of resources to develop courses and curricula that involve security training. Typical courses include cryptography, general computer security, network security, and specialized topics, such as security of wireless networks and web security.
Unfortunately, very few hands-on security courses are offered because of the additional difficulties of teaching practical security, which requires substantial extra effort on the part of both the instructor and the educational institution hosting the course. In particular, live exercises require a substantial amount of resources to prepare and execute.
This research will develop a framework for the creation and execution of live security exercises. The framework will reduce the time and effort needed to organize live exercises, and, in addition, it will make these exercises repeatable.
The framework will allow other Universities and educational institutions to take advantage of live exercises to provide hands-on security training to students. The framework will be usable in the context of a single course whose focus in on security, or could be use to support large-scale, multi-institution competitions. As a result, the framework will provide a novel tool for supporting the development of security skills of both undergraduate and graduate students.
