Volume 12 - Issue 4
Enabling exercises, education and research with a comprehensive cyber range
- Maria Leitner
University of Vienna, Faculty of Computer Science, Vienna, Austria, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
maria.leitner@univie.ac.at
- Maximilian Frank
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
maximilian.frank@ait.ac.at
- Gregor Langner
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
gregor.langner@ait.ac.at
- Max Landauer
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
max.landauer@ait.ac.at
- Florian Skopik
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
florian.skopik@ait.ac.at
- Paul Smith
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
paul.smith@ait.ac.at
- Benjamin Akhras
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
benjamin.akhras@ait.ac.at
- Wolfgang Hotwagner
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
wolfgang.hotwagner@ait.ac.at
- Stela Kucek
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
stela.kucek@ait.ac.at
- Timea Pahi
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
timea.pahi@ait.ac.at
- Lenhard Reuter
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
lenhard.reuter@ait.ac.at
- Manuel Warum
AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Center for Digital Safety & Security, Vienna, Austria
manuel.warum@ait.ac.at
Keywords: Cyber Range, Cyber Security, Training, Cyber Security Exercises, Anomaly Detection
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.