Design and evaluation of a learning environment to effectively provide network security skills

Information system security and network security are topics of increasing importance in the information society. They are also topics where the adequate education of professionals requires the use of specific laboratory environments where the practical aspects of the discipline may be addressed. However, most approaches currently used are excessively static and lack the flexibility that the education requirements of security professionals demand. In this paper we present NEMESIS, a scenario generation framework for education on system and network security, which is based on virtualization technologies and has been designed to be open, distributed, modular, scalable and flexible. Finally, an example scenario is described and some results validating the benefits of its use in undergraduate computer security courses are shown.