Development of Network Security Education

Distance education has grown tremendously over the last decade. Internet technologies have enabled a large-scale dispensation of lectures, exercises, and training. Virtual Learning Management Systems (LMSs) offer a number of tools to realize distance education and distance learning. In this work, we present a virtual system architecture for training cyber security professionals with hands-on skills. The architecture is based on a VirtualBox virtualization environment. Guest machines are installed on an instance of VirtualBox. The installed environment offers a safe and isolated workbench for experiments. After installation and configuration of the environment, students perform a number of instances of cyber attacks and system protections. According to students, the experiments were quite challenging but educational. peerReviewed