Virtualization and Cyber Security: Arming Future Security Practitioners

In the past five years cybercrime has grown to become one of the most significant threats to the safety of the nation and its economy. The government's call to arms has been eagerly accepted by business enterprises and academia. But training cyber security professionals raises a unique set of challenges. Cost, space, time and scalability are among the issues identified and possible solutions proposed. As a cyber-security professionals, we have realized the importance of practical experience which can be hard to deliver in a lecture based environment. The primary aim of this project is to evaluate and recommend a platform for Virtual handson Labs which may be used to provide a secure environment for cyber security students to evaluate and receive hands-on experience on possible threats and countermeasures. There are similar labs setup in different universities across the world but we have not been able to find any studies evaluating the virtualization platforms for their merit in order to run a virtual lab. Hence we study three of the most popular virtualization platforms and recommendations are provided to guide anyone who desires to setup such a lab.