A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range

Gregor Langner

1 a

, Florian Skopik

1 b

, Steven Furnell

2 c

and Gerald Quirchmayr

Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria

School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, U.K.

Faculty of Computer Science, Research Group Multimedia Information Systems, University of Vienna, Austria

Keywords:

Computer Science Education, Cyber Security, Cyber Security Education, Cyber Range, Teaching Model.

Abstract:

The threats posed by the digital space are a challenge for businesses, organisations and people that can no

longer be met with pure knowledge. For this reason, all individuals have to demonstrate not only knowledge

but also skills and competences in the ﬁeld of cyber security. However, this presents an enormous challenge

to higher education institutions (HEI) in terms of how to teach these competencies and skills to their students.

In this paper, we present a new teaching method for cyber security (CS). It is based on the requirements and

needs of educators and learners and integrates existing methodological approaches. This teaching method is

complemented by the use of a cyber range as a central teaching tool to make the education more realistic. The

method is not only applicable to technical programmes, it is applicable to all programmes and the focus is on

cross-disciplinary training. This ensures that the teaching not only meets today’s requirements but also those

of the future in the ﬁeld of education.

1 INTRODUCTION

Industry and society are facing major challenges in

the context of digitalisation. Cyber threats are be-

coming more target-oriented and sophisticated, re-

sulting in them being identiﬁed at a late stage. (On-

wubiko, 2017) This is reinforced by the fact that many

businesses require qualiﬁed IT employees who are

equipped with the necessary skills and competencies.

Furthermore, there are not enough graduates with this

kind of proﬁle in higher education.

Cybersecurity is no longer only a problem of the

IT-department, it affects the whole enterprise. This re-

sults in drastic consequences: for example, the identi-

ﬁcation and response to ransom demands and similar

software can take an average delay from 90 minutes

to 6 days (ENISA, 2019). This period increases by

a multiple in the case of Advanced Persistent Threat

(APTs), because of their speciﬁc nature and the meth-

ods used; it takes an average of 90 to 180 days for

them to be recognised (ENISA, 2019). This situa-

tion is made signiﬁcantly worse by the near absence

of digital investigation knowledge. With regard to CS

training, in particular problem-based teaching, there

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3271-5073

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1922-7892

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0984-7542

is currently inadequate capacity in most HEI, as well

in private CS training programmes. (Crumpler, 2019)

Existing training programmes also do not sufﬁ-

ciently address the problems and needs of businesses.

More speciﬁcally, the existing programmes are de-

signed in a way that the education is primarily theory-

based, with limited or no practical elements. Also,

the number of specialised graduates is too small to

meet the growing demand for CS in terms of aware-

ness, threat prevention and response. In practice, this

leads to a further aggravation of the shortage of spe-

cialists and a lack of expertise in CS. For this reason,

future training programmes must be designed in an in-

terdisciplinary way with a Cyber Range (Leitner and

Frank, 2020) to prepare non-technical students, and

the higher education sector must offer content and ex-

ercises that address current and future problems, as

well as needs. In order to achieve this, education must

change fundamentally, away from a lecture-oriented

approach to a more experience-oriented and collabo-

rative environment.

The majority of knowledge transfer in adult edu-

cation at HEI, educational establishments and insti-

tutions either use traditional or purely digital teach-

ing methods. For both methods typically teaching

lectures, case and literature analyses are used. The

advantage for the lecturers is that they only create

Langner, G., Skopik, F., Furnell, S. and Quirchmayr, G.

A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range.

DOI: 10.5220/0010834000003120

In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2022), pages 365-377

ISBN: 978-989-758-553-1; ISSN: 2184-4356

365

course materials once and the preparation time can

be reduced to a necessary minimum. Subsequently,

the materials created in this way are mostly used over

a relatively long period of time without or with only

minor adjustments. (Kebritchi, 2017)

However, there are a series of shortcomings with

these teaching approaches in the context of conveying

CS competencies to a wider audience: The knowl-

edge imparted does not correspond to the current sit-

uation in practice, leaving a gap in terms of future-

proof competences and qualiﬁcations that can achieve

immediate practical impact in the industry. (Millis,

1997) The method of education is centred on the lec-

turer, and thus the needs and abilities of the learners

cannot be considered in the lessons to the necessary

degree. Practical exercises or realistic exercises are

only rarely integrated into the training and if they are,

only a relatively small part of the content is covered.

The acquired knowledge is based on theory with min-

imal or no relation to actual conditions. Digital meth-

ods are mostly used as teaching support. They range

from the distribution to permanent storage of mate-

rials or as an easy way to submit assignments in a

centralised way. Collaborative problem solutions are

only partially possible. (Yijun, 2011)

It requires a high level of self-organisation and

know-how from the learners, since tools that would

make it possible are in most cases not offered. Hy-

brid approaches would be a solution for teaching in

response to current and future needs. This requires

not only the adaptation of lessons and materials, but

also the adjustment of didactic methods regarding

new conditions and the provision of necessary infras-

tructure. Digital and traditional teaching methods can

then be used in a complementary way, provided that

teachers and learners are coached according to their

needs. Educational concepts, must be structurally re-

designed to integrate both target groups and to achieve

a more holistic approach. (Vasiliev, 1996)

The work presented in this paper aims to over-

come the gaps between theory and practice in CS ed-

ucation in higher education. For this purpose, a teach-

ing concept for CS with a cyber range as a central edu-

cational element is introduced. The different require-

ments and needs from educators and learners were in-

corporated and embedded into the design. In this way,

it is ensured that a holistic picture of CS can be con-

veyed. To reduce the complexity and narrow the fo-

cus on the concept and its application, the other actors

involved in education, such as HEI or national regu-

lators, but also international regulators, were not in-

cluded in the assessment. The concept proposed here

is primarily intended to be used in higher education,

but with adaptations it can also be used in adult, edu-

cation and training.

The paper is structured as follows: In section 2 we

present the general requirements for a teaching con-

cept in the ﬁeld of CS. Based on the results and the

surveys, the developed teaching model is presented

in the chapter 3. We show the characteristics of the

model and the advantages which can be achieved with

the model. The performance and evaluation of the

model can be found in section 4. In section 5 the dis-

cussion of the results is presented and section 6 pro-

vides a summary of the proposed concept and an out-

look on future work.

2 TEACHING CONCEPT

REQUIREMENTS & RELATED

WORK

An educational concept must be able to react dynami-

cally to different input parameters in order to identify

all the needs of learners and teachers and be able to

meet these needs later more effectively. For this pur-

pose, the authors in (Flechsig, 1996; Meyer, 2005)

show the three dimensions (personal, informational,

organisational) that hold a central role in education

and learning. These are connected with a central Axis,

which ends with the learning objectives and the learn-

ing success (Figure 1).

The following requirements for a teaching concept

in CS are aligned with the challenges of CS. For ex-

ample, learners and teachers must be able to develop

skills and competences on the social, technical, and

multidisciplinary levels and to build up and maintain

a holistic understanding of CS. These three areas are

linked to the dimensions of the didactic octagon in

order to include the external and internal inﬂuencing

factors.

Social Requirements: Social learning is a pro-

cess that requires interpersonal skills such as commu-

Figure 1: Didactic octagon (Andres, 2020).

ICISSP 2022 - 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy

366

nication and people-to-people interaction. Therefore,

it is necessary to foster an environment, which stim-

ulates individuals to interact. The teaching concept

must allow learners to exchange and work collabo-

ratively on problems on a formal and informal basis,

whereas the teaching concept has to provide a men-

tal model to achieve this. It is important that learn-

ers are never given the impression of having to deal

with a problem on their own. Teachers need resources

they can use to ensure an adequate learner-teacher re-

lationship. Education is not only about transferring

knowledge, but also about fostering soft skills and

competences.(Motschnig-Pitrik, 2002) These are rep-

resented by two dimensions (personal, information)

of the didactic octagon.

Technical Requirements: All learners across all

disciplines have to be empowered with a range of

technical capabilities and competences. They also

need guidance to gain these competences and capabil-

ities. The educational approach must allow learners

to explore new solutions in a cyber range and allow

them to learn from mistakes. The technical resources

should support learning off and online to meet the var-

ious types of learners. Learners are from all social and

cultural backgrounds, therefore it is important to en-

able all to have equal access to the same technical re-

sources and to have equal chances to learn in general.

Educators not only have to provide exercises on the

technical aspect, they have to provide technical sup-

port when necessary and should maximise the oppor-

tunities offered by the digital space. They also have

requirements on the teaching concept on the technical

side, as the equipment needs to support the lessons

and carry out trivial tasks given by them.

Multidisciplinary Requirements: Addressing

the full scope of CS requires the education to pro-

vide learners with technical and non-technical con-

tent across all levels and empowering them to apply

those. (Sobiesk, 2015) For this reason learners need

to be taught the basics through disciplinary and in-

terdisciplinary courses. As a minimum, learners has

to develop knowledge and competences in the areas

of policy, ﬁnance, computer science, and law. Ed-

ucators are required to provide and deliver abstrac-

tions tailored to the target group. Learners must be

offered the opportunity to specialise in individual do-

mains through electives, but these programmes may

not be pursued as a sub-subject and must be care-

fully considered during curriculum design. As uni-

versity educators are in most cases only able to cover

their own discipline, cooperation between institutes is

necessary. Educators must work together and be able

to exchange current and future educational resources.

(Sobiesk, 2015) This is represented in the didactic oc-

tagon in the information dimension and, as outlined

above, there is a link to the social dimension.

3 TEACHING CONCEPT

Teaching in the ﬁeld of CS includes a wide range of

topics across different disciplines. In order to be able

to establish a complete teaching concept, different re-

quirements and factors from educators and learners

have to be kept in mind together with the individual

subjects and disciplines reference. Figure 2 illustrates

the complete teaching concept developed and the var-

ious input factors and parameters as well as the differ-

ent outcomes that will be achieved.

The objective is to enable learners to unleash their

full potential and to provide a practical and integrated

theoretical education through a variety of methods to

meet the challenges of CS. Educators will be able

to use proven approaches and enlarge its own edu-

cational conception as also acquire skills and compe-

tences that are not possible with current methods.

Furthermore, the use of this method offers edu-

cators the advantage that the teaching resources and

materials can be simply adapted and new assignments

generated for each semester. For adaptation, the out-

comes will be used, only on the organisational level,

as the student groups will never be the same due to

external factors.

3.1 Environmental Conditions

External factors or environmental conditions refer to

all parameters that inﬂuence education beyond the

scope of a educational approach and are highly sensi-

tive to the educators and learners. In this model, four

areas have been identiﬁed. Three are considered in-

dependent and one is formed by the others. These can

be found in the ﬁrst section of the model and are ex-

plained in more detail below. For the sake of brevity,

only the essential ones are included in this example

but there are many factors that need to be taken into

account or that have an impact on teaching in general.

3.1.1 External Drivers

External drivers are the factors that do not come from

the educators and learners but may inﬂuence them in

their decisions and activities. They are generally es-

tablished or enacted by external stakeholders such as

HEI, legislators, employers and society and have a

strong inﬂuence on education or on the target groups.

The following points have been elaborated as external

drivers:

A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range

367

Educators outcome

Cyber security teaching model

Students

Lecturer

Teaching session

Collaborave exercise

Applicaon scenario

Learning

Env

Key factors aﬀecng the success of

training

Cognive skills

Social skills &

compromise skills

Movaon &

Expectaon

Skills & non-

cognive skills

Learning strategies

Teaching concepts

Problem-oriented

lesson

Origins-oriented

lessons

Time-oriented

lessons

Communicaon-

oriented lessons

Mul-perspecve

lessons

Theorecal exercises

Collaborave hands-on examples

Interacve learning of the content

Summarising the key points

Teaching environment

factors

Locaon/ Experience/

Resources

Content/Group

External drivers

Lecture with the

fundamentals

Managme

nt Env

Technical

Env

Learner outcome

Addional

teaching materials

Experience, skills,

capabilies and

competences

Legal requirements

Teaching delivery Approach

Evaluaon and

Feedback

Scenario-based

lessons

Flipped

classroom

Work based

learning

Blended

learning

Student-led

learning

New trends in technology

Changed demands within

the labour market

Finances/Economics

Technical

cybersecuity

scenario

Non-technical

cybersecurity

scenario

Interdisciplinary

cybersecurity

scenario

Skills, capabilies

and competences

Awareness raising

for CyberSecurity

topics

Interdisciplinary

cooperaon

Integrated training

of young

educators

Interdisciplinary

knowledge and

perspecves

Pracce-oriented

training

Teaching objecve/

Outcomes

Qualitave

feedback from

educators and

learners

Intermediate

evaluaons

Performences

and soluon

approach

Lessions

learned

Strategic

decisions

Resource

planning

Leadership

Self-Guided

learning

Experimental

approaches

to problem

solving

(Meta)

Cognive

Equipment

Cyber Range

(Virtual

Cooperave

Learning

Environments)

Collaborave

learning

spaces

Online

classrooms

….

Figure 2: Overview of the teaching model.

Legal Requirements: These are deﬁned by the

legislator (European and national acts) and have dif-

ferent effects on the education. They have a direct

impact on the teaching content through their require-

ments; the knowledge must be acquired by learners to

be able to assess the full implications of actions and

measures and to ensure compliance with the law. On

the other hand, they can trigger training and further

education to prepare learners who are already embed-

ded in the world of work for the new conditions.

New Trends and Technologies: CS exists in a

changing environment and is strongly inﬂuenced by

new technologies and trends. This also has a strong

impact on the target groups and the teaching environ-

ment. Learners are expected to be able to learn and

apply the basics, including new technologies. For this

reason, they also expect education to provide them

with the knowledge they need. For the educators, it

means that they have to continuously educate them-

selves to enable them to apply the new technologies

to their students. An integration of these new trends

has to be done continuously as the labour market ex-

pects it.

Labour Market Requirements: The labour mar-

ket is always shifting and evolving in the context of

technology. As a result, employers require new em-

ployees to have a set of skills, competences and capa-

bilities and expect HEI to provide these to the learner.

Employers want to keep education and training costs

as low as possible for economic reasons. Learners

are under strong external pressure as they fear that if

they do not meet these requirements, their opportuni-

ties will be harmed. The educators and HEIs, on the

other hand are divided. On the one hand, they have

to provide learners a general education with the ba-

sics so the more advanced topics can be addressed,

and on the other hand, not providing this education

and training may lead to a reduction in the number of

students enrolled and therefore a lack of ﬁnancial re-

sources for adaptation. The teaching method must be

able to accommodate the changing requirements and

provide them in full.

Finance/Economics: Here the different circum-

stances of the two target groups are addressed, but

also the higher education institution as a whole, which

has a direct inﬂuence on the teaching method. For

learners, this factor decides whether they study full-

time and focus on their degree or have to work to sup-

port themselves. In principle, there is nothing rep-

rehensible about working alongside a degree if the

learner is also active in the same ﬁeld. In this way

they can generate additional output that supports them

in their degree programme. Another aspect is that

learners need to purchase additional materials or tech-

nology to fully comprehend and complete the course

content. This is a limiting factor for educators, as they

ICISSP 2022 - 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy

368

have to manage teaching on a technological and hu-

man level with the resources available to them. The

teaching method can only integrate new technologies

or materials if the resources are available. Conse-

quently, the teaching environment has to take this into

account.

3.1.2 Key Factors of Training

The learning process depends on factors that can be

directly or indirectly inﬂuenced by the educators and

the learners themselves. These learning factors also

inﬂuence the teaching methods applied during the

learning process as well as during the preparation

phase. For this work, the following key factors for

successful learning were identiﬁed:

Cognitive Skills: This refers to skills that al-

low the acquisition of knowledge and information

processing as well as being responsible for logical

thinking. (Anderson, 2013) These are essential skills

which not only steer learning but are also crucial

in solving problems. Consequently, these skills are

responsible for perception, memorisation, learning,

decision-making and attentiveness. These skills are

fundamental to the concept of teaching and to CS.

They enable different aspects of the disciplines to be

absorbed and incorporated into the assessment. This

skill is important not only for CS but also for all areas

of learning.

Skills & Non Cognitive Skills: These are the soft

skills related to communication and cooperation but

also responsible for commitment, self-efﬁcacy and

conscientiousness. (Coneus, 2009) They are often as-

sociated with the other soft skills and social skills; al-

though for some areas this is accurate, for others they

are distinct. Developing these skills will enable fu-

ture leaders, but also others, to deal with situations of

great stress. The teaching method itself is to foster

and stimulate the development of these skills.

Social Skills & Compromise Skills: Describes

the learners’ ability to interact and compromise on a

social level. It includes social intelligence, interper-

sonal characteristics, verbal and nonverbal elements

and social self-regulation. (Kelly, 1982) Learning

these skills is essential for achieving objectives in

understanding complex topics and ﬁnding solutions.

The acquisition of these skills is a major challenge in

education. To enable this and to further develop ex-

isting skills, the teaching method provides the collab-

orative area which can be adapted to suit at any time.

Learning Strategies: These are action patterns to

regulate the learner’s own learning. These are either

conscious or unconscious and vary according to the

requirements and the situation. (O’Neil, 2014) The

learning strategies used by learners can be classiﬁed

as follows, according to (Shi, 2017):

• Cognitive strategies: The development, structuring and

use of knowledge.

• Repetitive learning strategy: A strategy of reviewing in-

formation and knowledge in order to transfer it into the

long-term memories of the learners.

• Development strategies: Combining existing knowl-

edge with prior knowledge to abstract complex prob-

lems to familiar problems.

• Organsational strategies: Establish a relationship be-

tween acquired knowledge in order to develop a con-

sistent picture.

The teaching method allows each learner to apply

their own strategy to achieve an optimal learning goal.

The intention is also to enable learners to expand their

horizons and apply new strategies in order to achieve

the objective more effectively.

Motivation & Expectation: Learners have dif-

ferent motivations and expectations in a subject area.

Learners may be highly interested in a subject area,

and the wrong methods can reduce their motivation.

Learner expectations can be difﬁcult to meet in most

cases. For this reason, it is important that courses

are described explicitly so as not to disappoint mo-

tivated learners. Motivated learners are supported by

the teaching method through self-directed methods of

the learner and other learners can develop their own

interest through the method.

3.1.3 Selection of the Teaching Concept

The following teaching methods have been selected

to ensure a deep understanding of CS. This is based

on the problem-based approach, which allows teach-

ers to create exercises that enable learners to develop

solutions and work collaboratively. The purpose, ac-

cording to (Hu et al., 2018) and (Lehmann, 2008), of

problem-based learning is achieved when the follow-

ing points are met:

• In the ﬁrst phase (identiﬁcation), learners need to un-

derstand the problem in all details. They need to ob-

serve the problem from all perspectives and compre-

hend the nature of the problem before moving on to the

next phase.

• The second phase (analysis and collaboration) requires

the learner to analyse the problem in order to solve it.

They have to examine the problem in comparison with

the current situation and the initial situation and com-

pare them with similar problems. They can receive as-

sistance from the teacher in order to design a solution

through cooperation with other learners.

• In the penultimate phase (evaluation and reﬂection),

learners have to review and evaluate the knowledge ac-

quired in the context of the problem once it has been

A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range

369

solved. To do this, they reﬂect and expand the problem-

solving process to other domains with equivalent chal-

lenges.

• The last phase (knowledge enhancement) consists of

developing new possibilities for solving complex prob-

lems based on achieved results and considering the ad-

vantages and disadvantages of the identiﬁed solution in-

cluding alternative methods.

This central approach is extended with the approaches

listed in Table 1

Table 1: Teaching Approaches.

Communication

oriented

Through this, the fundamentals will be communicated along

with the theory. It also avoids misunderstandings in under-

standing the content and the task. Learners must further be

able to state the problem at any time through communication.

Origin-oriented

approach

Are integrated in order to be able to meet the requirements

of all learners. This requires that the educators analyse and

incorporate these requirements in a short time frame. Both

have to react to the situation, however all needs cannot be

met in this way.

Experiential and

fact/ knowledge-

based approach

Applied to facilitate and optimise the transfer of knowledge.

This enables the learner to associate the individual parts to-

gether. To achieve this, a strong interaction between learner

and educator, but also between learners, must be established.

This is supported by collaborative exercises in the teaching

method.

Multi perspective

approach

The method ensures ﬂexibility while supporting a variety of

topics. It allows learners to explore solutions to problems

from different perspectives of different disciplines.

Time-based

approach

Exercises and theoretical teaching sessions are conducted in

close time to each other in order to increase the learning out-

put and therefore anchor the knowledge more deeply. The

exercises are designed in a way that they can be ﬁnished dur-

ing a short period of time. The short intervals between in-

dividual exercises make it possible to reduce the complexity

and deﬁne the intermediate objectives in order to be able to

carry out an evaluation at all levels.

Scenario-based

approach

Speciﬁc content (theoretical and practical) is designed to tell

a continuous narrative. This allows learners to relate complex

content to each other, but also to link it to other disciplines.

3.1.4 Teaching Environment Factors

The last external factor that affects the teaching con-

cept is inﬂuenced by the other three factors and cor-

relates between the three domains. It addresses all

edges of the didactic octagon and allows the teaching

method to react to all impacts and factors. For this

purpose it is necessary to consider the individual ar-

eas and axes that are related to the teaching unit as

described in the chapter Requirements. The personal

Axis is represented by the educators and the learners

and both groups incorporate their requirements and

factors into the teaching method. The Information

Axis links the educational approaches that are pre-

sented with the content of the unit. The content is only

partially ﬁlled by the external factors, while the other

part is fulﬁlled by the teaching method which has to

be coordinated in order to ensure harmonisation. The

Organisational Axis is inﬂuenced by the available ex-

ternal resources, but the majority is affected by the

teaching method. In order to connect these individual

axes, the main Axis becomes operational. Here the

objectives and the outcome are linked. Objectives are

in part determined by external factors and in part by

the teaching method. The Outcome is inﬂuenced in

the same way, but can be inﬂuenced by the educator.

All the inputs are weighted equally in the teaching

methodology and are handled in the same way. Ne-

glecting or unequally weighting them leads to a dis-

balance and consequently to a less than optimal out-

come. This is why a feedback loop was integrated into

the teaching method, which allows an additional eval-

uation and adjustments after a run with the outcome.

This is a possibility for the educators and learners, but

also for the institutions, to quickly and efﬁciently ad-

dress any shortcomings.

3.2 Cybersecurity Teaching Model

The teaching model for CS covers the theory lessons

as well as the exercises. The model also includes the

performance evaluation of both parts and the eval-

uation process regarding the skills, capabilities and

competences used and built by the learners. For that

reason, the model is divided into three parts, which

are deﬁned as follows:

1) Didactic Principles: These are represented by the teach-

ing approach to teaching and the teaching session.

2) Exercise Principles: In the method, exercises are ba-

sically designed as collaborative activities, which is

why this approach represents the meta-level. Within

this meta-level are the application scenarios and the

management, learning and technical environment con-

ditions.

3) Evaluation Principles: They are presented in the teach-

ing model with the coresponding area of evaluation and

feedback in order to lead to an optimal outcome.

3.2.1 Didactic Principles

The didactic principles made available to educators

by the teaching model are derived from the gen-

eral principles of comprehensiveness, clarity, target-

orientation, self-activity and topicality. (Marius-

Costel, 2010) And are included in the two areas. The

ﬁrst area contains the methodology and approaches of

how the teaching content is delivered to the learner,

see Table 2. The teaching delivery approaches for the

model are deﬁned as follows:

The second section describes the various options

for designing a session. The basis is a lecture with the

fundamental knowledge necessary for the learners.

The foundations of the teaching sessions can be

extended with the following approaches to increase

the efﬁciency of learning, see Table 3

ICISSP 2022 - 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy

370

Table 2: Methodology and Approaches.

Flipped Class-

room

Lessons are designed to improve the quality of teaching

through a learner-centred approach. It requires learners to

independently prepare for the lesson and work on a problem

within the sessions. (Ozdamli and Asiksoy, 2016)

Blended Learn-

ing

A combination of ofﬂine and online resources are used. It al-

lows learners to control the time, place and pace of learning.

This also requires that educators and learners are in physical

contact with each other however face-to-face practices are

enhanced by digital based activities in terms of content and

delivery. (Graham, 2006)

Work based

learning

Is a strategy that allows learners to have real-life experiences.

It is a combination of theoretical and technical skills and is

usually linked to business practices. (Boud and Solomon,

2001) It is not possible at the higher education level - here the

cyber-range environment is applied. This provides learners

the opportunity to work on real systems and to develop topics

that are otherwise only available in business.

Student-led

learning

The responsibility for the teaching experience rests with the

learner. Knowledge acquisition is facilitated as learners in-

teract with a peer-to-peer process. (Marvell, 2013) In the

model, this approach is fundamentally used in exercises to

provide learners with all the opportunities and in order to

strengthen skills.

Table 3: Type of Sessions.

Theoretical exer-

cise

During the lessons, exercises can be performed where theo-

retical topics are elaborated. This means that learners have

to deal with the content of the lessons. This is similar to the

lessons that children receive to learn mathematics.

Collaborative

hands-on exam-

ples

Learners have to work together on abstract and real exam-

ples in the sessions. This allows for immediate assistance in

case of problems and enables timely preparation of results

for all learners. The complexity of the exercises is variable

and always depends on the level of knowledge and skills of

the learners.

Interactive learn-

ing of the content

Use of speciﬁc tasks and questions to encourage learners to

participate in the lesson without communicating directly with

the lecturer. This should reduce the barriers and lead to a new

teaching experience.

3.2.2 Exercise Principles

The exercises represent an extension of the theoretical

lessons and should serve to consolidate the content.

The exercises are therefore important as they are not

isolated and follow the same narrative. Therefore, the

principles of the exercise follow the didactical guide-

lines. During the exercises, the learners work collab-

oratively together, so it is on the meta level.

An application scenario represents the ﬁrst part

of the exercise that needs to be prepared. The exer-

cise topic and the individual focus points will be de-

termined and different storylines will be generated.

A storyline deals with a speciﬁc CS challenge, e.g.

ransomware, APT, etc., or a storyline pushes the sce-

nario ahead to guide the learner to the desired objec-

tive. Storylines can also be incorporated to increase

the difﬁculty of the scenario and produce background

noise in order to disguise the attacker’s actions. For

this reason, the Table 4 contains scenarios that sup-

port this model and can be built upon. There are three

dimensions in the concept to adapt the exercise to the

different conditions of the environment, enabling all

teaching concepts to be addressed. To do this, edu-

cators have to address the three dimensions of man-

agement, learning and technology. The ﬁrst dimen-

Table 4: Application scenarios.

Technical cyber-

security scenario

This kind of exercise involves a strong technological com-

ponent. In order to design this type of exercise, an infras-

tructure (Cyber Range) has to be integrated into the training

where learners will be able to work with the scenario and

repeat the scenario if necessary in case the chosen solution

does not lead to the desired result.

Non-technical

cybersecurity

scenario

Represents the logical opposite of the technical scenarios. In

this type of scenario, technology can and will be used, but

the aim is not that learners develop a solution that focuses

on the technical level. The aim here is rather to focus on the

non-technical areas such as risk management etc. that can

be developed without the use of technical resources. Purely

non-technical exercises are the preliminary stage of the in-

terdisciplinary exercises and are designed to evaluate learner

procedures and processes.

Interdisciplinary

cybersecurity

scenario

The storyline approach can be a combination of technical and

non-technical exercises with the integration of different dis-

ciplines or a pure exercise where learners from different dis-

ciplines work on the same challenge. Storylines must there-

fore be planned in a way that all learners can contribute their

strengths and pass on their knowledge to other learners by

working together.

Other scenario This teaching method also allows other types of scenarios for

integration. The educators have to make sure that all parame-

ters can be implemented and that the learning objectives and

the expected outcome are properly deﬁned.

Table 5: First dimension.

Strategic deci-

sions

Learners have to make decisions in order to succeed in the ex-

ercise and therefore in the scenario. The decisions will change

as the information content evolves. It is very important that the

decisions are documented and on which basis they were taken.

It prepares learners for future leadership roles.

Resource plan-

ning

Learners need to consider resources that are supposed to be

lacking in the exercise, like money, human resources etc. It

prepares learners for future leadership roles.

Leadership It is essential for future decision-makers to build up compe-

tences and skills in this sector. This is often neglected in edu-

cation and training programmes or reduced to the transmission

of soft skills.

Other Additional management duties can be added to the exercise,

depending on the scenario.

sion is the management environment, while the role

assignment belongs to the learners. The characteris-

tics of the dimension are shown in the Table 5.

The second integrated environment that is sup-

ported and embedded by the model deals with the

topic area of Learning with Application. In this ﬁeld,

competences and skills are addressed that are used

and acquired. The following strategies of this dimen-

sion are listed in the Table 6.

Table 6: Second dimension.

Self-Guided

learning

Combines learning organisation, learning goal identiﬁcation,

learning control and learning outcome monitoring. Learners

are stimulated to learn by their own and educators provide the

environment. (Kraft, 1999)

Experimental ap-

proaches to prob-

lem solving

Enables learners to independently develop solutions based on

experience and acquired knowledge. In the exercise, these so-

lutions are evaluated and in case of a failure, the learners are

forced to reconsider the solution and develop a new approach

to the problem.

(Meta) Cognitive

Equipment

Firmly anchored in the teaching method in order to guarantee

the processing of information on the different dimensions and

to enable learners to acquire new knowledge and is linked to

the logical thinking.

The last environmental dimension which is inte-

grated into the teaching concept as a ﬁxed element is

the technical dimension, see Table 7. The exercise

methodology is provided and carried out with tech-

nical resources. The different exercises in the sub-

A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range

371

Table 7: Third dimension.

Cyber Range Is a virtual infrastructure that can be adapted according to the

requirements of the challenge. Physical components such as

operational technologies (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT)

can be integrated, to bring the experience more into the real

world.

Collaborative

learning spaces

Software module that allows learners to collect information

and share it in a centralized way and refer to it as a ticket

system when new information is available. In the European

project ROUTE-TO-PA (Palmieri, 2021) an open source and

publicly available tool was developed that fulﬁlls these re-

quirements.

ject areas also require a variation of technical exercise

techniques and methods.

3.2.3 Evaluation Principles

The evaluation of the theoretical and practical part

of the training is important for the assessment, but

also for the development of skills. The assessments,

however, also support the trainers on the organisa-

tional level. They receive feedback and can adapt ex-

ercises and teaching to improve quality or to better

meet learners’ needs. Learners can be motivated by

high-quality feedback at every stage and work more

intensively on the content. For this reason, differ-

ent approaches have been integrated into the teaching

method to support teachers, and they follow the fol-

lowing principles in Table 8.

Table 8: Integrated methods of evaluation.

Quantitative

feedback from

educators and

learners

In this variant, it is possible for learners to receive feedback

from educators, learners but also experts. This allows learn-

ers to understand which errors they have made during the ses-

sion and which competences and skills they need to further

improve. In this way it is also possible to ensure assessment

with points.

Intermediate

evaluations

Exercises take place in a constantly changing environment.

This makes it difﬁcult for teachers to understand the deci-

sions and the solution. Evaluation of tasks at regular inter-

vals is therefore essential. This makes it possible to guide

and intervene in case of problems.

Performances

and solution

approach

The assessment of individual learning must be carried out

by deriving the overall solution, thus ensuring that learners

receive the assessment that corresponds to their performance.

This is made possible by using this approach. In an exercise,

the technology allows the individual learner’s performance

to be tracked and assessed.

Lessons learned It is a repetition of the learning objectives in connection with

the knowledge and skills that have been obtained. The pur-

pose of this is to show the learner how the steps relate to each

other and to support the learner to use this knowledge in sim-

ilar cases in the future or to integrate it into new approaches.

The components and individual approaches pre-

sented in this model are designed to support teachers

in their educational activities. For learners, the model

provides a practical education with the integration of

disciplines that are not part of their studies. The im-

plementation of the model is a process that needs to be

carried out over a longer period of time. However, it

is important that both target groups ﬁnd their require-

ments and needs reﬂected in the teaching method.

3.3 Outcomes Addressing the Target

Groups

The focus of teaching is always on transferring

knowledge, skills, competences and reaching objec-

tives. That is also the case in the developed model

for CS education. In this model, not only learn-

ers reach objectives and outcomes but also educa-

tors gain knowledge and competences. Consequently,

this model can also be seen as a method of life-long

learning. This means that through each iteration of

the model, the educator’s development is enhanced

and can be better tailored to the requirements of the

learner. The results of both target groups are pre-

sented below.

3.3.1 Learner Outcome after a Session

The methodology focuses on the holistic understand-

ing of CS as well as on the personal and methodologi-

cal development of the learners. The following points

describe only a part of the outcomes that the learners

achieve, but these are crucial.

Skills capabilities and competences: Through the

exercises and the various theoretical teaching options,

the model offers learners the creation and further im-

provement of skills, competences and capabilities in

the ﬁeld of CS, but also in associated subject areas.

The application also strengthens the learners’ conﬁ-

dence on their own capabilities and leads to higher

quality results in more in-depth training programmes.

Therefore, learners are constantly challenged to apply

these skills.

Awareness raising for CS topics: For future em-

ployment it is essential that all learners, not only

computer scientists, are aware about CS topics. The

model actively supports this by focusing on interdisci-

plinary approaches and by providing a framework for

the development of a CS awareness among all learn-

ers. Guiding learners to the topics and involving them

more in the teaching leads to a lower threshold and

awareness raising and therefore to an overall increase.

Interdisciplinary knowledge and perspectives:

The integration from disciplines which are not related

to computer science and the integration of learners

from this discipline in the exercises ensures that both

sides acquire knowledge from the corresponding dis-

cipline. This is supported by the joint elaboration of

solutions and the integration of the individual special-

ist knowledge into the solution.

Practice-oriented training: A fundamental compo-

nent of the model is the practical exercise and elabo-

ration to solve problems. The harmonisation of the-

oretical lessons with the scenario-based approach en-

ICISSP 2022 - 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy

372

ables the use of various exercises. In this way, the

proportion of practice sessions can be increased and

current topics can be integrated into the programme.

These practical exercises foster the development of

skills and capabilities and increase the understanding.

There are other outcomes that can be achieved in

the area of learning, these have not included in the list

because of the prioritisation process.

3.3.2 Educators Outcome after a Session

The model provides educators various opportunities.

It is essential that educators embrace the process and

overcome barriers in order to collaborate more and

obtain outcomes.

Additional teaching materials: Teaching materials

have to be constantly reworked in order to be up to

date. New materials also regularly need to be gener-

ated as a result of the changes in the programmes. The

model supports the educators in this process. Through

the experiences they make, the educators receive indi-

cations of where improvements are necessary. Learn-

ers contribute to this process with their solutions. This

gives educators the opportunity to incorporate solu-

tions to show examples to other learners. On the other

hand, learners contribute by producing documents.

These can serve as a basis for new exercises.

Experience, skills, capabillities and competences:

Teachers build experience and develop new ideas

through each iteration. By designing exercises, they

develop and sharpen skills, capabilities and compe-

tences as they engage with known and new subject

areas and develop a new perspective. The model sup-

ports the teacher in reaching the results by requiring

the teacher to actively engage in the construction of

the learner’s skills and competences, expanding their

own as well. On the other hand, they are supported by

the multiple possibilities that the model offers them.

Interdisciplinary cooperation: In the exercises, ed-

ucators have the opportunity to teach across disci-

plines. This may lead to new collaborations, and also

to cooperation with other teachers in other countries.

This will also broaden their perspectives and there-

fore lead to an increase in personal skills. The model

supports this in the sense that they are always con-

fronted with interdisciplinary challenges and have to

strategise to integrate these challenges. Educators can

initiate and build up the collaborations.

Integrated training of young educators: The train-

ing of young educators confronts HEIs with speciﬁc

challenges. Resources for training young educators

are limited most of the time. The model provides as-

sistance to educators and higher HEIs in this process

by integrating young educators into the exercise and

allowing them to develop their skills. In addition, the

young educators can develop individual approaches

and provide new perspectives. This leads to a situa-

tion where gaps in training can be bridged and young

educators are not overwhelmed when they are ﬁrst de-

ployed.

4 EVALUATION

To evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching model for

CS, an interactive lecture and an exercise was carried

out concerning the topic of forensics and examined

with a test. Three groups of participants were selected

to be part of the evaluation. The ﬁrst consists mostly

professionals from the ﬁeld of CS, hereafter referred

to as A, who have been working or researching in the

ﬁeld at least for 5 years. They carried out the exer-

cise and established a threshold. It was not expected

that the other groups of participants would reach this

threshold. The second group of participants, hereafter

referred to as B, consists of young professionals in CS

or young researchers who have just completed their

studies. This represents the reference value for the

third group of participants, the learners. They have re-

ceived all the necessary documentation and have been

supervised throughout the process. The last group of

participants is made up of learners, hereafter referred

to as C, from the ﬁeld of computer science in the un-

dergraduate (Bachelor’s) or postgraduate (Master’s)

stage. Learners are selected only if they have not had

any explicit lessons related to the topic in their stud-

ies. This should ensure that all learners participate in

the test with the same prerequisites.

Participants from groups A (3 participants) and B

(5 participants) carried out the exercise under labo-

ratory conditions. They were observed throughout

the experiment and all actions and conversations were

recorded and documented with their consent. Group

A carried out the exercise in 15 minutes using their

knowledge and acquired skills. They proceeded me-

thodically and goal-oriented and were thus able to

work out the task quickly and answer all questions.

Group B ﬁrst had to familiarise themselves with the

setting. They completed the exercise in 45 minutes

on average. They spent a lot of time analysing indi-

vidual ﬁles and had to understand the relationships.

When they identiﬁed the vulnerability and researched

about it, they were able to answer all the questions

and complete the exercise positively.

For group C (72 participants), the interactive

lecture and exercise was divided into two different

modes. The participants in the ﬁrst mode took part

in the interactive lecture and then had to complete a

test with 10 questions within 24 hours. They had 30

A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range

373

Figure 3: Test results.

minutes to answer the questions and could attend in

the technical exercise after that. The participants in

the second mode also attended the interactive lecture

and performed the technical exercise two weeks later.

After completing the exercise, the group had to an-

swer the test with the same questions.

Results of the Knowledge Assessment: The re-

sults of the knowledge assessment are shown in Fig-

ure 3. The results of the group that performed the test

after the interactive lecture are shown in blue, while

the results of the group that performed the test after

the exercise are shown in orange. It was possible to

answer the questions correctly, incorrectly or partially

correctly. Partially correct answers were marked as

incorrect in the binary evaluation.

The second group performed better in 9 out of

10 questions. About 38% of the participants in this

group answered the last question correctly, whereas

none of the participants in the ﬁrst group did so. The

ﬁrst question was the most outstanding; here the ﬁrst

group performed better. This question is directly con-

nected to the contents of the lecture and does not oc-

cur on the exercise in this form. About 50% of the

learners in the ﬁrst group had passed the knowledge

assessment and about 80% in the second group. An

improvement of 30% appears in a practical exercise

within a cyber range that also has a strong connection

to the theoretical topics..

Performance in the Exercise Compared to All

Participant Groups: For the practical exercise, the

learners (36 participants) of group C formed teams

of three individuals. This enabled the model and the

participants to reach their full potential. They had 60

minutes to solve the task assigned to them. The chal-

lenge was an implementation of the CVE-2019-11043

vulnerability and the learners had to ﬁnd out how the

attackers got into the system, what activities they per-

formed and which evidence they left in the system.

From the 12 teams that participated, 3 teams were

not able to solve the task in time. They attempted

to apply the methods and strategies they had learned,

but according to their own statements, their techni-

cal knowledge was not so advanced that they could

have handled it better. The remaining 9 groups com-

pleted the task in time. 4 groups completed the task

in 35-40 minutes. This means that they have largely

undercut the reference value. The remaining groups

in the exercise came close to the reference value, with

an average time of 48 minutes.

5 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

The objective of this work is to enhance CS educa-

tion and training with a newly developed model that

utilises a cyber-range environment as a central edu-

cational tool. For this purpose, the requirements and

needs of educators and learners are collected through

surveys, interviews and workshops and incorporated

into the model. Educators and learners are clearly not

the only actors involved in CS education which have

requirements to the design of the educational pro-

gramme. Therefore, also the external conditions are

included in the analysis as in the model. In a second

step, the teaching concept was examined in a practi-

cal setting. The objective with this step is to ensure

that the model signiﬁcantly improves the educational

situation and that knowledge, competences and skills

can be acquired. For this purpose, the learners had to

work on a topic which is not part of their degree pro-

gramme. A comparison between experts and learners

was therefore possible and the improvement could be

deﬁned on a quantitative level.

Our evaluation of the interactive lecture has

yielded the following results. The learners are much

more active and engaged than in the classical lecture.

It was possible to immediately verify understanding

based on the learners’ answers and thus to react and

adjust before the learners acquired inaccurate knowl-

edge. An important aspect for the achievement of the

programme’s objectives. Feedback from learners af-

ter the event was also positive. The results of the

Q&A show that a purely interactive lecture is not suf-

ﬁcient to convey complex topics. The results can only

be signiﬁcantly improved by applying learning in a

coordinated exercise after the lecture. With a purely

interactive lecture, the percentage of correct answers

in the experiment at 50%, see Figure 3 and Table 9.

The combination of the exercise and the interactive

lecture increases the percentage of correct answers in

the experiment to 80%. Thus, a 30% increase in per-

ICISSP 2022 - 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy

374

Table 9: Performance of the participant groups ”Lecture”.

Type Average of correct

answers

Improvement

Interactive lecture 50 % /

Interactive lecture with exercise 80 % 30 %

formance could be achieved in the experiment by ap-

plying the model.

A learner-centred approach including interactive

components is a reasonable extension of current

teaching methods. Learners are more involved and the

transfer of theoretical knowledge will be improved.

Educators have to invest more effort in the develop-

ment of the materials. The amount of material they

have to prepare is in the dual mode restricted in vol-

ume, they have to include less illustrative examples to

convey the content. As educators are guiding learn-

ers in the elaboration of the content, learners have to

engage more intensively with the content. Auditing

and maintenance of the teaching materials is simpli-

ﬁed due to the limited scope.

A new approach to the exercises is developed and

tested during the work. The methodology for the ex-

ercise is based on existing approaches and methods.

For this purpose, several approaches are evaluated.

The aim here is to integrate the advantages of all ap-

proaches to overcome or mitigate the disadvantages

in order to design a concept that enables all learners

to learn CS. The key feature is a cyber-range environ-

ment which facilitates the construction of scenario-

based content and provides realistic hands-on train-

ing with the virtualised infrastructure. The exercise is

conducted in the same way as the lecture with learners

and additionally with two reference groups consist-

ing of experts and researchers from the ﬁeld of CS.

All groups performed the exercise in the same way,

whereby the scenario was designed in such a way that

theory and exercise complement each other.

The Table 10 shows the performance of the partic-

ipant groups in terms of minimum, maximum and av-

erage processing time. Furthermore, the table shows

the percentage improvement compared to the average

reference time. The learners’ results were divided into

two parts. The ﬁrst group of learners is below the ref-

erence time with their average processing time. The

learners in this group achieved an approx. 15% bet-

ter average time by completing all tasks. The second

group is about 8% above the reference time. This ap-

proximation was the expected result from the model.

The experts’ results were within the expected

scope and provide a reference value for the other

groups. The group of young researchers from the

ﬁeld of CS elaborated the exercise within the given

parameters of the exercise. They chose and carried

out a methodical approach. To do this, they used their

Table 10: Performance of the participant groups ”Exercise”.

Group Max

time

Min time Avg time Percentage

comparison

Expert 16:21

Minutes

14:10

Minutes

15:15

Minutes

34.2312 %

Young professionals 47:52

Minutes

39:14

Minutes

44:33

Minutes

100 %

Leaner ”Below the

reference value”

40:03

Minutes

35:28

Minutes

37:45

Minutes

84.7362 %

Leaner ”Over refer-

ence value”

58:53

Minutes

45:46

Minutes

48:24

Minutes

108.6419 %

acquired knowledge and competences and related the

task to similar problems and worked out a solution

approach and procedure. The learners’ results range

across the spectrum. However, it is impossible to ex-

pect that all learners will complete a course positively,

despite the best teaching method. Each person is dif-

ferent, depending on the knowledge they have. The

majority of learners completed the exercise success-

fully and were able to achieve the objectives of the

exercise. Their developed solutions is based on both

the knowledge gained and the knowledge learned in

the interactive lecture. Some learners exceeded the

results of the reference group, the majority completed

the exercise in the expected range with good results.

Teachers need to restructure their course to apply

the model and thus spend resources to design teach-

ing materials, exercises and scenarios. They also have

to go through several cycles to ﬁnd an optimal mode

between theory and practice. The central teaching

tool in the model is the cyber range, so it is important

to develop an EDU range which includes the limited

technical resources as well as the short preparation

time of the educators. The applicability of the Cyber

Range must also be given to learners from technical

and non-technical studies.

6 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORK

The digitisation process in all areas of daily life makes

it increasingly important for all individuals in soci-

ety to develop a general awareness of CS issues and

therefore to receive training and education in CS. As a

result, HEIs and Training Institutions are challenged

to develop a programme that enables individuals to

be trained in CS. They need to develop a programme

which enables them to carry out the training. These

programmes should not limit their focus on the qual-

iﬁcation of technical staff but also include service

teaching of other disciplines.

The model for CS education with a cyber range

environment as a knowledge transfer method pro-

vided in this work aims to improve education as well

as the transfer of skills, abilities, and competencies.

A Tailored Model for Cyber Security Education Utilizing a Cyber Range

375

In this regard, this model puts the emphasis on in-

tegrating the requirements and needs of the educa-

tors, learners, and external factors. For this purpose,

this work has evaluated different teaching approaches,

the current CS environment and the requirements and

needs of educators and learners, and has analysed po-

tential cascading effects.

The survey results are used to conceptualise and

implement the model, resulting in a theoretical and

practical lesson. They serve to evaluate the model as

well as the integrated approaches. The evaluation fol-

lowed a two-stage procedure. In the ﬁrst stage the

acquisition of knowledge with an interactive lecture

session was evaluated. In the second stage, a tailored

practical teaching session with a cyber range envi-

ronment was carried out in addition to the interac-

tive session. This showed that the results regarding

the learners with the exercise were signiﬁcantly better

than without. In order to compare the results from the

learners, the exercise was additionally conducted with

experts and young researchers from the ﬁeld of CS.

The learners achieved the similar results as the young

researchers in the ﬁeld of CS by using the model, and

in some cases they even performed better than them.

This work provides a basis for delivering CS edu-

cation to everyone. However, more broadly based sur-

veys are still needed across all disciplines to ensure

that all learners’ and educators’ needs and require-

ments are integrated. This needs to include learners

of all disciplines - and the same needs to be done

with educators. The assessment must include non-

technical concerns as well. This will ensure that exer-

cises and theoretical lessons do not miss the require-

ments and needs of the target group. Another impor-

tant aspect is that the requirements of the labour mar-

ket are also included. Then the developed model will

be able to cover the relevant areas and provide train-

ing in the ﬁeld of CS for everybody.

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