Abstract
Cyber ranges are virtual environments used in several contexts to enhance the awareness and preparedness of users to cybersecurity threats. Effectiveness of cyber ranges strongly depends on how much realistic are the training scenarios provided to trainees and on an efficient mechanism to monitor and evaluate trainees’ activities.
In the context of the emulation environment of the THREAT-ARREST cyber range platform, in this paper we present a preliminary design of our work in progress towards the definition of a model-driven approach to monitor and evaluate the trainee performance. We enhance the platform emulation environment with an agent-based system that checks trainees’ behavior in order to collect all the trainee’s actions performed while executing a training exercise. Furthermore, we propose a modular taxonomy of the actions that can be exploited for the description of the trainee’s expected behavior in terms of the expected trace, i.e., the sequence of actions that is required for the correct execution of an exercise. We model the expected and actual trainee activities in terms of finite state machines, then we apply an existing algorithm for graph matching to score the trainee performance in terms of graph distance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This restriction on the use of atomic actions as transition labels does not limit our approach since, on the base of model granularity, a state transition can be labelled by completion events associated to complex activities.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
References
Andreolini, M., Colacino, V.G., Colajanni, M., Marchetti, M.: A framework for the evaluation of trainee performance in cyber range exercises. Mob. Netw. Appl. 25(1), 236–247 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-019-01442-0. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11036-019-01442-0
Braghin, C., Cimato, S., Damiani, E., Frati, F., Mauri, L., Riccobene, E.: A model driven approach for cyber security scenarios deployment. In: Fournaris, A.P., et al. (eds.) IOSEC/MSTEC/FINSEC -2019. LNCS, vol. 11981, pp. 107–122. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42051-2_8
Gamma, E., Helm, R., Johnson, R., Vlissides, J.M.: Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, 1st edn. Addison-Wesley Professional (1994)
Schneier, B.: Attack trees. Dr. Dobb’s J. 24(12), 21–29 (1999)
Somarakis, I., Smyrlis, M., Fysarakis, K., Spanoudakis, G.: Model-driven cyber range training: a cyber security assurance perspective. In: Fournaris, A.P., et al. (eds.) IOSEC/MSTEC/FINSEC -2019. LNCS, vol. 11981, pp. 172–184. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42051-2_12
Soultatos, O., et al.: The THREAT-ARREST cyber-security training platform. In: Fournaris, A.P., et al. (eds.) IOSEC/MSTEC/FINSEC -2019. LNCS, vol. 11981, pp. 199–214. Springer, Cham (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42051-2_14
Tovar\(\check{\rm n}\)ák, D., Špaček, S., Vykopal, J.: Traffic and log data captured during a cyber defense exercise. Data Brief 31, 105784 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2020.105784
Vykopal, J., Ošlejšek, R., Čeleda, P., Vizváry, M., Tovar\(\check{\rm n}\)ák, D.: KYPO cyber range: design and use cases. In: ICSOFT 2017 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Software Technologies, pp. 310–321. SciTePress (2017). https://doi.org/10.5220/0006428203100321
Vykopal, J., Vizvary, M., Oslejsek, R., Celeda, P., Tovarnak, D.: Lessons learned from complex hands-on defence exercises in a cyber range. In: Proceedings - Frontiers in Education Conference, FIE, October 2017, pp. 1–8. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., December 2017. https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2017.8190713
Acknowledgements
This work has been partly funded by the European Commission within the H2020 project THREAT-ARREST (contract n. 786890).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Braghin, C., Cimato, S., Damiani, E., Frati, F., Riccobene, E., Astaneh, S. (2020). Towards the Monitoring and Evaluation of Trainees’ Activities in Cyber Ranges. In: Hatzivasilis, G., Ioannidis, S. (eds) Model-driven Simulation and Training Environments for Cybersecurity. MSTEC 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12512. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62433-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62433-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62432-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62433-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)