Building A Cybersecurity Lab With Legacy Equipment

According to the Electronics TakeBack Coalition report in 2013, we not only generate more electrical or electronic waste, but we also recycle more in recent years. Recycling legacy electronic equipment is a long-term effort. On the other hand, experiential learning in cybersecurity is crucial to enhance the learning experience for computer science and networking undergraduates. However, limited budgets to support teaching in cybersecurity and outdated configurations of legacy equipment have been challenging institutions. In order to address above issues, we developed a cybersecurity lab, CyberLab, that uses legacy hardware and open source software to provide an experimental environment for undergraduates. The infrastructure of the environment includes a Virtual Private Network (VPN) server and a gateway to access the network that is composed of multiple virtualized machines and legacy routers and switches. We are currently designing a series of courses in cybersecurity topics on this proposed infrastructure.