Design of a virtual computer lab environment for hands-on information security exercises

There is an increasing demand from both students and industry for more computer science students to have experience in information security. One area that is difficult for smaller colleges to implement is hands-on security exercises for students. This paper describes a method and our design considerations for constructing a virtual computer lab environment to be used for such courses. This system uses a single server to host virtual machines that can be configured into small networks and made available for student assignments. These machines for each student group can communicate amongst themselves but are isolated from each other and from the rest of the campus network. Students can be given administrative access to the machines without compromising the security of the campus network. While our initial focus is on an information security course, this type of system would also be useful for laboratory exercises in operating systems, networking, and system administration classes. This software is under active development and is being made freely available for use in other courses and at other institutions.