SecTULab: A Moodle-Integrated Secure Remote Access Architecture for Cyber Security Laboratories

Abstract

The Covid-19 crisis has challenged cyber security teaching by creating the need for secure remote access to existing cyber security laboratory infrastructure. In this paper, we present requirements, architecture and key functionalities of a secure remote laboratory access solution that has been instantiated successfully for two existing laboratories at TU Wien. The proposed design prioritizes security and privacy aspects while integrating with existing Moodle eLearning platforms to leverage available authentication and group collaboration features. Performance evaluations of the prototype implementation for real cyber security classes support a first estimate of dimensioning and resources that must be provisioned when implementing the proposed secure remote laboratory access.