A Virtual Laboratory for IT Security Education

Success of IT security not only depends on the evolution of technologies, but also relies on the knowledge of IT-Personnel and the level of their IT-security education. In order to deliver IT students and professionals hands-on experience of security technologies and tools by electronic means, this paper proposes the concept of a virtual laboratory and discusses its application in practical IT security education. Providing security experience in traditional ways is difficult because it needs dedicated test-bed networks and a lot of administrative efforts, which makes on-site training expensive. The virtual laboratory is an online security laboratory which is built with virtual machines. Virtual machines are software applications which simulate real machines on a host. Equipped with rich security tools and network interfaces, those virtual machines can be assigned to users as laboratory platforms. For that virtual machines are under monitoring and administration, the laboratory can be managed in a reliable way. This makes the running of a virtual laboratory on the Internet possible. Experience within the TeleLab “IT-Security” project successfully proves that the concept of virtual laboratories effectively eliminates geographical and financial limitations in traditional IT Security education.