PROMISE: A Platform for Competition and Education in Cyber Security

University Of Arkansas Little Rock, Little Rock AR

Investigators

Abstract

Cybersecurity competitions are an important component in security education and research, as they complement and enhance traditional pedagogical approaches. However, the benefits of security competitions may not be fully realized without addressing a few challenges in current security education including lack of competent training facilities and shortage of appropriate and shareable training materials that cater to security novices. Moreover, security competitions may be perceived as a burden to the many two or four year teaching institutions that lack the necessary resources. As a result, these institutions miss an opportunity to engage a large population of young talent in cybersecurity. This research project seeks to address those challenges by developing a novel, virtual platform for both competition and education, namely PROMISE (Platform for Competition and Education in Cyber Security), and a set of learning and competition modules using the platform. Built on top of state-of-the-art, open-source cloud computing systems, the PROMISE platform is scalable and flexible and supports competitions of different styles as well as hands-on security puzzles, labs and projects, which makes it a versatile facility for both security competition and general education and research. The learning modules cover a variety of important security topics and each of them has four levels of content (including concept level content for learners with little security background) to engage learners with different backgrounds and interests. By sharing developed software and learning materials, collaborating with diverse institutions such as high schools and community colleges, and organizing cyber-defense competitions and professional development workshop, this project is expected to make both immediate and long-term impacts on cyber security competition and education.