Cybersecurity Teaching Research Articles

A Gamification Approach to Teaching Cybersecurity in CPS

With the implementation of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in modern manufacturing environments, Cybersecurity has become an outstanding challenge in the design and daily operation of networked Industrial Control Systems (ICS). While Cybersecurity is an expert domain on its own, designers and operators of such Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) need to acquire at least a fundamental understanding of Cybersecurity concepts in order to contribute to the integration of such concepts both in design and operational processes. The fact that such Cybersecurity concepts have been originally established in the Information Technology (IT) domain makes knowledge transfer to stakeholders in the mostly mechanical and Operational Technology (OT) an educational challenge on its own. This paper proposes a ludic approach to teaching fundamental Cybersecurity concepts to stakeholders without any or only little prior IT knowledge. The key methodology relies on designing game scenarios that help convey Cybersecurity terminology and concept knowledge in a ludic form before letting students actually apply them in a physical CPS environment. While this basic idea is not new, the originality of our proposed approach lies in the novel combination of existing, validated Cybersecurity teaching resources to design and implement such scenarios, and in complementing those with learning on real CPS environments. The feasibility of our approach has been demonstrated in a case-study that has delivered very promising results with respect to the potential power and effectiveness of our method.

Measuring Cybersecurity Teaching: Case University Students in Finland

Measuring Cybersecurity Teaching: Case University Students in Finland

Leveraging Virtualization Technology in Teaching Cyber Security Courses in Sub-Saharan Africa

<p><span lang="EN-US">Teaching and learning can be effective and enjoyable if the course is well-packaged and presented. This was the experience of students and teachers participating in our hands-on Cyber Security course. Effective teaching of Cyber Security requires practical demonstration of attack patterns and their related countermeasures. This implies that outstanding and modern laboratories must be in place to teach and learn the necessary principles and practices effectively. Unfortunately, newly established universities in Sub-Saharan Africa need more funds for establishing and maintaining such laboratories. However, several researchers have shown that virtualization technology (VT) can enhance available but limited physical computing laboratories as an alternative to complex physical laboratories with huge procurement costs. This paper proposes an ad hoc and mobile laboratory for teaching practical principles in Cyber Security. The report aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of virtualization technology in teaching Cyber Security in newly established universities in Sub-Saharan Africa with zero to minimal computer laboratory infrastructure.</span></p>

Teaching Offensive and Defensive Cyber Security in Schools using a Raspberry Pi Cyber Range

Computer Science as a subject is now appearing in more school curricula for GCSE and A level, with a growing demand for cyber security to be embedded within this teaching. Yet, teachers face challenges with limited time and resource for preparing practical materials to effectively convey the subject matter. We hosted a series of workshops designed to understand the challenges that teachers face in delivering cyber security education. We then worked with teachers to co-create practical learning resources that could be further developed as tailored lesson plans, as required for their students. In this paper, we report on the challenges highlighted by teachers, and we present a portable and isolated infrastructure for teaching the basics of offensive and defensive cyber security, as a co-created activity based on the teacher workshops. Whilst we present an example case study for red and blue team student engagement, we also reflect on the wide scope of topics and tools that students would be exposed to through this activity, and how this platform could then be generalised for further cyber security teaching.

A cloud-based systematic cyber security teaching and learning framework for high school students

A cloud-based systematic cyber security teaching and learning framework for high school students

A cloud-based systematic cyber security teaching and learning framework for high school students

A cloud-based systematic cyber security teaching and learning framework for high school students

Use of augmented reality-enabled prototyping of cyber-physical systems for improving cyber-security education

The use of augmented reality-enabled scenarios in cybersecurity teaching is proposed in the article to respond to new requirements for the rapid adoption of new technologies and profound knowledge of cybersecurity issues by professionals. Implementation of project-type activities based on real cybersecurity issues in application fields of cyber-physical systems is suggested to improve the competence forming. A use-case of agricultural cyber-physical system of systems is discussed as a viable example of augmented reality-enabled prototyping of cybersecurity risk-aware architecture. The necessary steps are analysis of general and business-specific tasks on cybersecurity, creation of a list of competencies, formalized in educational standards and curricula, development of gaming scenarios for the formation of hard and soft skills, development of the scenario management system for AR interfaces. The system using AR tools can be easily adapted to different cybersecurity training activities. Industrial cyber-physical systems may be vulnerable due to insecure wireless connectivity, lack of encryption, inadequate access policy. The project-based learning complex is focused on the implementation of a data acquisition, storage and processing platform for new sensor networks and instruments. Representing all the diverse information on different layers will be greatly improved by use of the developed holographic projection AR tools.

A Flexible Laboratory Environment Supporting Honeypot Deployment for Teaching Real-World Cybersecurity Skills

In the practical study of cybersecurity, students benefit greatly from having a full control of physical equipment and services. However, this presents far too great a risk to security to be permitted on university campus networks. This paper describes an approach, used successfully at Northumbria University, in which students have control of an off-campus network laboratory, with a dedicated connection to the Internet. The laboratory is flexible enough to allow the teaching of general purpose networking and operating systems courses, while also supporting the teaching of cybersecurity through the safe integration of honeypot devices. In addition, this paper gives an analysis of honeypot architectures and presents two in detail. One of these offers students the opportunity to study cybersecurity attacks and defences at very low cost. It has been developed as a stand-alone device that can also be integrated safely into the laboratory environment for the study of more complex scenarios. The main contributions of this paper are the design and implementation of an off-campus, physical network laboratory; a small, low-cost, configurable platform for use as a “light-weight” honeypot; and a laboratory-based, multi-user honeypot for large-scale, concurrent, cybersecurity experiments. This paper outlines how the laboratory environment has been successfully deployed within a university setting to support the teaching and learning of cybersecurity. It highlights the type of experiments and projects that have been supported and can be supported in the future.

Cybersecurity Teaching through Gamification: Aligning Training Resources to our Syllabus

Cybersecurity Teaching through Gamification: Aligning Training Resources to our Syllabus

Cyber Education and the Emerging Profession of Cybersecurity

Education shapes behavior and, for that reason, a comprehensive study of an important emerging field like cybersecurity can be a powerful agent for societal change. However, there are a number of systemic and cultural challenges that have to be overcome before education can become a practical solution. If we distribute the teaching of cybersecurity in diverse places on campus, students are not going to get a coherent understanding, let alone practice overall cybersecurity effectively. A broad-scale educational understanding of the field must be developed based on a comprehensive definition of legitimate threats. Technological solutions solve specific problems, consequently we have been very successful in situations involving well-defined and established physical challenges. What we have not dealt with is the human behavior and creative thinking that characterizes the exploits of the hacker community, and until the solution incorporates actions that recognize and address every reasonable form of attack, we will never be secure.

Cyber Security Teaching and Learning Laboratories: A Survey

Cyber Security Teaching and Learning Laboratories: A Survey