On the Necessity of Establishing a National Cybersecurity Testbed

Abstract

Information security now is considered to be cross-disciplinary and comprehensive field. It integrates the accumulation of knowledge in many disciplines like computer science, mathematics, communications, electronics, physics, etc. Thus, there has been an ongoing effort to improve the experiences in information security experimentation. Many international institutions are investigating enhanced approaches to provide hands-on learning and research environments. However, academic institutions are facing with the difficult challenge of providing lab infrastructuresthat meet the increasingly growing needs of cybersecurity training. In this paper, we report on the necessity and importance of building an effective national testbed for cybersecurity experimentation. We also present a general top-level architecture for this testbed emphasizing the most important enabling technologies.