Cyber Taxi: A Taxonomy of Interactive Cyber Training and Education Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive taxonomy for interactive cyber training and education systems, aiming to improve cybersecurity training effectiveness and facilitate research in new security technologies.

Contribution

It presents an extendable taxonomy that categorizes technical setup, audience, environment, and training setup for interactive cybersecurity training.

Findings

The taxonomy covers key aspects of cyber training systems.

It enables better design and evaluation of cybersecurity training programs.

Supports research and development in security education.

Abstract

The lack of guided exercises and practical opportunities to learn about cybersecurity in a practical way makes it difficult for security experts to improve their proficiency. Capture the Flag events and Cyber Ranges are ideal for cybersecurity training. Thereby, the participants usually compete in teams against each other, or have to defend themselves in a specific scenario. As organizers of yearly events, we present a taxonomy for interactive cyber training and education. The proposed taxonomy includes different factors of the technical setup, audience, training environment, and training setup. By the comprehensive taxonomy, different aspects of interactive training are considered. This can help trainings to improve and to be established successfully. The provided taxonomy is extendable and can be used in further application areas as research on new security technologies.