SaTC: EDU: Collaborative: Advancing Cybersecurity Learning Through Inquiry-based Laboratories on a Container-based Virtualization Platform

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It is critical to educate and train a cybersecurity-capable workforce in an era where security breaches, privacy violations, and phishing scams have become commonplace. However, due to the complicated and abstract nature of many cybersecurity concepts and techniques, it is challenging for students to comprehend them in an effective manner. To address this challenge, this project seeks to create innovative learning materials and tools that can help transform the status quo of cybersecurity education. The project design is based on the inquiry-based learning model and enabled by recent advances in virtualization technology. Specifically, this project consists of a set of inquiry-based, hands-on laboratories that are hosted on an affordable, scalable, extensible, and low-maintenance container-based virtualization platform. This project meets the pressing and essential needs in cybersecurity curricula by aiding the development of new lab materials and courses for community and four-year colleges. In this project, three types of hands-on labs will be designed and developed: Outreach, Core, and Advanced. Outreach labs are designed specifically for community college students to inspire their curiosity and interest in cybersecurity, and thus, to drive them to continue their study in a 4-year college. The key purpose of the core labs is to assist the learning of complicated cybersecurity concepts and technologies. The advanced labs aim at not only introducing emerging security technologies, but also inspiring students who are interested in doing research in these areas. All of our lab materials and software tools will be open-source and available to learners, educators, and researchers. Lastly, training on the container-based cloud computing platform will be offered to instructors and graduate students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.