AIT Cyber Range: Flexible Cyber Security Environment for Exercises, Training and Research

Abstract

With the evolution of threats and attacks and the speed of automation, new modern training and learning environments are needed to support the challenges of digital organizations and societies. In recent years, cyber ranges, i.e., virtual environments that support the simulation of diverse infrastructures, have emerged and are often utilized for cyber security exercises or training. With these environments, organizations or individuals can increase their preparedness and dexterity, for example, by training to identify and mitigate incidents and attacks. In this paper, we present the AIT Cyber Range which was designed based on several principles such as scalability, flexibility and the utilization of Open Source technologies. This paper outlines the building blocks of the architecture and implementation: computing platform, infrastructure provisioning, software provisioning and scenario engine. Furthermore, the implementation is demonstrated by three use cases: cyber exercises, training as well as security research and development. For future work, we aim to further extend the building blocks and to address federation and interoperability with other cyber ranges.