Build The Next Generation of Cybersecurity Training and Academic Study

Goodbye to PowerShell, VMWare Cloning and Manual Configuration, and say Hello to Docker, Cassandra, Python and GitHub.

We spent many years building our VMWare ESXi infrastructure (vSoC). Over the years, we kept pushing for investment, and it is now running for 1000s of students. It currently runs for a wide range of modules for our campus and remote students, and includes firewalls, servers (Ubuntu, Kali, Windows 2000, 2003, 2008, etc), hosts (Windows XP, Windows 7, etc) and lots of different networks.

For us, we wanted to create environments which used real-life systems and supported real-life tools. Students have their own environment for every module, and academics can craft their own environment, and then replicate it. We now use it for network security, cryptography, digital forensics, pen testing, Cloud systems, and a wide range of modules.

But now we are stepping up to another level, and aim to build the whole lot using the current state-of-the-art. This will be built with Docker, and scripted from GitHub. We thus aim to script everything about the environment, including username, passwords, server configurations, and so on, and then run this through GitHub.