Abstract: Now more than ever, cybersecurity professionals are in demand and the trend is not expected to change anytime soon. Currently, only a small number of educational programs are funded and equipped to educate cybersecurity professionals and those few programs cannot train a workforce of thousands in a relatively short period of time. Moreover, not only are additional educational resources needed, but the programs need to deliver high quality, hands-on learning for future cybersecurity professionals. Survey results show that lack of funding and lack of equipment prevent some educational institutions from providing a hands-on learning component in security curricula. One solution is the use of remote labs to increase the number of students with access to security lab environments. We propose that it is an appropriate time for Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance and other organizations to collaborate to assist universities, community colleges and even high schools, through the development of remote security labs, to increase our nation’s capacity to adequately train a large number of cybersecurity professionals. The authors have recently implemented a remote lab infrastructure to begin testing the viability of the concept on a small scale.

Keywords: Curriculum, Cybersecurity, Hands-on learning, Remote labs, Information assurance education

Download this article: ISEDJ - V11 N2 Page 57.pdf

Recommended Citation: Martin, N. L., Woodward, B. (2013). Building a Cybersecurity Workforce with Remote Labs. Information Systems Education Journal, 11(2) pp 57-62. http://isedj.org/2013-11/ ISSN: 1545-679X. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of ISECON 2012)