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Implementation and management of a secure environment for online cybersecurity lab experiments is challenging for several reasons. In addition to normal issues associated with hardening a remote lab environment against unauthorized user access and network data transmissions leaking outside the lab environment, the very nature of cybersecurity lab experiments can be inherently dangerous. For example, management network traffic from lab activities may be sniffed using common cybersecurity utilities, the results of lab activity assessment might be hacked and modified, and IT devices used to analyze lab progress may be attacked and compromised. Finally, it is critical for academic integrity that student assessment is secure, assertable, consistent, and repeatable.The environment we created provides both educational processes and game based, hands-on exercises, where students can learn the concepts and best practices in cybersecurity defense as well as hands-on skills learning. An initial assessment was taken at a recent train-the-trainer workshop, and several lab learning and effectiveness metrics are provided.

This paper reviews common practices for minimizing virtual machine (VM) resource requirements. Also, the authors propose a novel nested VM architecture used in a cybersecurity virtual laboratory environment containing over 90 VMs on a single host. Using open source tools and minimizing the operating systems of VMs, the authors were able to significantly reduce VM resource requirements while increasing VM performance. This work provided helpful information for technology educators who seek to reduce their VM overhead and increase virtual lab environment performance. This paper also provided a groundwork for further research into maximizing virtual lab environment performance.