Enabling exercises, education and research with
a comprehensive cyber range


Maria Leitner
1,2+, Maximilian Frank2, Gregor Langner2, Max Landauer2, Florian Skopik2,
Paul Smith
2, Benjamin Akhras2, Wolfgang Hotwagner2, Stela Kucek2, Timea Pahi2,
Lenhard Reuter
2, and Manuel Warum2

1University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science, Vienna, Austria
maria.leitner@univie.ac.at

2AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria

firstname.lastname@ait.ac.at

 

Abstract

With the continuous rise of threat actors and attacks, it is even more imminent to create cyber ranges, for example as training and exercise environment, that contribute to the modern challenges of a digital society. New digital environments are needed to tackle information security and cyber security challenges. In the past 15 years, virtual environments that simulate a diverse set of information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) infrastructures, further called cyber ranges, have been developed. These virtual platforms provide the operations of exercises, training, research and other activities. The sum of these activities contribute to science and strengthen the practice of organizations. In this paper, we introduce the design and implementation of the AIT Cyber Range and outline its building blocks: computing platform, infrastructure provisioning, software provisioning and scenario engine. Furthermore, we describe five use cases: cyber exercises, training as well as security research and development on industrial control systems and intrusion detection systems. For future work, we aim to address federation and interoperability with other cyber ranges.

Keywords: Cyber Range, Cyber Security, Training, Cyber Security Exercises, Anomaly Detection

 

+: Corresponding author: Maria Leitner
University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science, Waehringerstrasse 29, 1090 Vienna, Austria, Tel: +43-1-4277-79112 and AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, SCT, Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Vienna, Austria

 

Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks, Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications (JoWUA)
Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 37-61, December 2021 [pdf]

Received: April 30, 2021; Accepted: October 8, 2021; Published: December 31, 2021

DOI: 10.22667/JOWUA.2021.12.31.037