Focus On Education With CYRIN Cyber Range

Uploaded on 2024-04-23 in JOBS-Training, FREE TO VIEW

Brought to you by CYRIN

In recent years and accelerated by the pandemic, education has changed considerably. It used to be that students sat in a classroom, teachers taught, and materials were not that interactive, be they books or white boards (which offer some degree of interaction).

Digital technology was having a hard time penetrating the standard classroom. First computer labs were constructed in-house, then laptops and tablets were allowed some interaction with the in-house network. When the pandemic hit, students were dispersed outside of the physical classroom in great numbers particularly from 2020-2022, and education, particularly higher education, had to adapt.

How do you reach and teach students online? Is it simply setting up a camera and letting the teacher teach as they normally would? Or do you start to use truly interactive technology to engage the students and enhance the classroom experience for both the instructor and students?

Some enhancements were stopgap measures, where a classroom was taped and turned into a video, where students could watch either live or at a later date. To find truly interactive solutions, you had to start much earlier.

CYRIN, a truly interactive environment for both the student and the instructor, had that fortunate head start. For years prior to the pandemic, with our corporate parent, ATCorp, CYRIN has been working with various government agencies, particularly the U.S. defense department, to create something unique. Something that could augment the classroom, while existing away from the classroom in a totally virtual environment. It would be available 24/7, it would reside in a secure cloud or could be run on-premise. It would be simple to access and easy to use. And instructors and students could both monitor their progress and actions on the platform. Such was the beginning of CYRIN, a true cyber range, that allows for hands-on training, cyber war gaming and incident attack simulations. Students, trainers, educators, and corporate cyber defenders were now able to teach and train in a virtual environment with realistic learn-by-doing scenarios.

Among CYRIN’s innovations is a live training platform that replicates real software and networks in a virtual, sandboxed environment. It allows learners to learn by doing, not by watching others.

CYRIN is easy to use (web-based), scalable (cloud-enabled) and instructor friendly (authoring and monitoring tools).

The advent of CYRIN looks prescient because according to Statista,

The Online Education market is estimated to reach $185.20 billion in 2024.

It is expected to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2024-2028 of 8.61%, resulting in a projected market volume of $257.70 billion by 2028.

Among the various markets, Online University Education is anticipated to be the largest, with a projected market volume of $120.70 billion in 2024.

When considering the global market, the United States is expected to generate the highest revenue, with $87.51 billion in 2024.

As the market continues to grow and adapt, CYRIN® looks to grow and adapt as it continues development work for the Defense Department, the education market, and multiple commercial sectors as well.

For the education market, one of its best features is that it resides in the cloud and is available 24/7, 365 days a year with simple browser access. Its three-tiered level of content which includes labs, exercises and attack scenarios is designed to enhance and support what instructors are teaching in the classroom or online. It can be used in a classroom or in a totally online environment.

Instructors can pick from packages of labs designed for different cybersecurity classes, build their own packages, or even build out new scenarios in multiple subject areas, not just cyber, using CYRIN’s patented Exercise Builder.
CYRIN has been available commercially since 2018 and is the product of more than 15 years of research and development into how students learn, and how their progress can be measured.

CYRIN’s focus is hands-on laboratory exercises, whether performed individually or as part of a team. The CYRIN platform offers a number of benefits for stakeholders, whether instructors, managers, researchers, students or trainees.

Unlike other cyber ranges, CYRIN has three distinct features:

Content – Over 60 labs, exercises, and attack scenarios.

Performance Monitor – A tool that allows instructors and students to see progress and measure results as they work their way through our course content.

Exercise Builder – A separate, licensable tool that allows you to build new content, modify existing content or bring your own content onto the CYRIN platform.

Extensive Content Library

There are currently 61 interactive labs, exercises, cyber-attack scenarios, and full courses on the platform, with new activities being launched all the time. CYRIN provides three levels of preparatory training starting with skills development labs. Labs are available in nine (eight?) specialty categories, such as Cyber Forensics and Web Application Security Analysis. Labs are primarily instructional in nature, with detailed instructions guiding the student. Exercises build on what students learn in the labs to challenge them in more goal-oriented tasks. For example, detailed instructions - readily available in the labs - are replaced by hints. Each hint has a title and can be requested if a student requires; viewed hints are tracked by the platform.

Attack scenarios put the student on a combination IT and Industrial Control System (ICS) network, then subject them to a cyberattack; the student must determine the nature of the attack, its source, and methods to neutralize it.

Each level, from Labs to Exercises to Attacks, is designed to increase in difficulty, preparing students for a pathway to certification. Full courses unite live scenarios with videos and other teaching materials to create a comprehensive curriculum, in preparation for trainee certification. All content is mapped to the NIST National Institute for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) framework and MITRE ATT&CK matrix.

Exercise Builder

Subscribers are not limited to the labs we have designed. CYRIN’s Exercise Builder allows educators to modify existing scenarios or create brand new ones from scratch, in multiple subject areas. The Exercise Builder is entirely browser-based and uses a simple, drag-and-drop interface to construct virtual networks and craft learning objective trees, including the details of how students’ activities are monitored and how they are credited toward learning goals. Exercise Builder lets you move from idea to lab in minutes, not months.

Performance Monitor

A unique feature of CYRIN is its automated performance monitoring suite. As trainees make progress through labs, CYRIN tracks their activities in the virtual environment: Have they configured the firewall correctly? Have they started the web server? The individual actions become part of the Learning Objective Tree, where they are mapped to goals, skills, and scores according to a hierarchy defined by the instructor. Individual items in a CYRIN Learning Objective Tree can be assigned points, or a continuous running score, or the tree can be configured to track completion only. Further, the tree allows for complex logic when warranted (e.g., “a trainee must do A and (B or C) and not do D”).

Performance Monitor Tracks Progress

At runtime, an instructor can see a live view of trainee progress, virtually looking over the trainee’s shoulder, either in terms of the learning objective tree or in tabular form (number of skills demonstrated, score, etc.). Instructors have visibility into past runs, either as objective trees or in aggregate: How are the trainees doing overall? Which aspects of the lab prove most difficult or time-consuming? How can the lab be improved?

CYRIN Success Stories

CYRIN has been extensively by educational institutions, workforce development organizations, established certification bodies, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

In one campaign we partnered with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and their Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI) to use off-the-shelf as well as custom CYRIN scenarios to support their Cybersecurity Bootcamp. RIT-CGI, using CYRIN’s patented Exercise Builder Tool, created over 20 custom labs for the program. ATC-NY and CYRIN have licensed several of these labs as part of our content development program and many now reside on the CYRIN platform.

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI) has used off-the-shelf as well as custom CYRIN scenarios to support their Cybersecurity Bootcamp. RIT-GCI created over 20 custom labs for the program, and ATC-NY has licensed many of these labs back as part of our content development opportunity and many now reside on the CYRIN platform.

ATC-NY’s award-winning CYRIN® cyber range was initially developed with Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) seed funding from the U.S. Air Force and is now in use by nearly 70,000 users worldwide for hands-on training, testing, and experimentation. As of January 2024, we have had more than 100,000 exercise runs on CYRIN, going all the way back to the initial commercial product launch in 2018!

Currently, we have served some 67,139 users and 100,690 total lab runs. At a rough estimate of 5 virtual machines per exercise, that’s on the order of half a million VMs served!

Location

CYRIN is primarily a cloud-based solution, using the Microsoft Azure cloud in the US East region. No special hardware or software is required for students or instructors. Participants access CYRIN via a standard HTML 5 compliant web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari, etc.). A virtually unlimited number of scenarios can be run simultaneously, as CYRIN dynamically allocates cloud resources.

CYRIN is also available in an on-premises format if the client requires it. The on-premises option allows a college/university to maintain their own CYRIN instance on their own hardware.

CPU and RAM requirements for participants are minimal; only those required to run one of the web browsers listed above. Approximately 1 Mbps or more of network bandwidth is suggested for optimal performance when accessing a CYRIN exercise. The average bandwidth usage is far lower, less than 100 Kbps. Exercises are usable at even lower bandwidths, with some delay in screen refresh on remote consoles.

Curriculum Content and Labs

CYRIN provides live, in-browser, sandboxed exposure to how cyber threats operate. CYRIN’s 58+ labs, exercises, and attack scenarios explore network-based, application-level, supply chain, and other types of cyber threats. Labs offer step-by-step instructions, explaining how and why each action should be taken.
The entire catalog of CYRIN content is available here and new content is being added regularly.

Training

Instructors CYRIN provides virtual training meetings to help instructors and educators get up to speed, as well as to select appropriate scenarios to match their syllabi. CYRIN labs have been used by multiple colleges and universities as part of credit-bearing coursework.

CYRIN’s curriculum development specialists work with faculty to select CYRIN scenarios that make the most sense for a given course of instruction. Typically, the instructor will supply ATCorp with a syllabus or syllabi, and we will make recommendations. We will also work with faculty to determine if customized scenarios would benefit the course of instruction. These may be customized versions of existing CYRIN content, or completely new scenarios.

We provide, free of charge, semi-annual virtual training meetings and monthly virtual meetings with instructor groups as needed. These meetings help ensure CYRIN is meeting the needs of educators and can help scenario authors get up to speed with CYRIN’s optional Exercise Builder. In-person meetings can also be arranged if required, with reimbursement for travel expenses.

Range Administrators The CYRIN team provides semi-annual virtual training meetings with range administrators, free of charge. Range administration tasks are expected to be minimal, mostly consisting of ensuring faculty have the access they should and that any LMS integration is in place. We will also hold monthly virtual meetups as needed for range administrators, should they have questions or concerns, or wish to know of updates to the platform.

Instructor Materials

Lab Guides All CYRIN educational scenarios contain step-by-step instructions viewable without actually starting the exercise. These can be downloaded or printed as needed.
Some Final Notes of Interest

The CYRIN platform offers a number of benefits for stakeholders, whether instructors, managers, researchers, students, or trainees:

Each trainee or team event gets their own personal instance of the cyber range and can access exercises at their own schedule. Exercises can be paused, with complete state saved, for later resumption.

CYRIN is completely cloud-based, and all access is through a standard web browser. No special software or travel is required.

Trainees see real-time assessments of their progress, based on their actions within the virtual environment.

Performance management tools let instructors see details on individual trainee activities, as well as metrics across a cohort of trainees. This data analytics capability helps guide the instructor to where trainees are struggling or where more practice is required.

Integrated, context-sensitive instructions and hints guide trainees and help those that might be stuck.

CYRIN’s Learning Management System (LMS) is based on open standards and integrates with existing LMS systems such as Brightspace/D2L, Canvas, Blackboard, and others. CYRIN uses the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) to provide a seamless experience for students.

Team-based scenarios allow for trainees to collaborate, or compete head-to-head, in challenges set out by the instructor.

Researchers, managers, and educators can use CYRIN’s Exercise Builder, a web-based graphical tool, to easily modify existing CYRIN content or create new content. ATC-NY can provide instructional support as well, collaborating with authors to build custom content that best meets their needs.

Labs Exercises Attacks

With Universities around the world using CYRIN and more signing on all the time, now is your opportunity to see how CYRIN can complement your Cyber and IT programs.