SCORPION Cyber Range: Fully Customizable Cyberexercises, Gamification and Learning Analytics to Train Cybersecurity Competencies

Abstract

It is undeniable that we are witnessing an unprecedented digital revolution. However, recent years have been characterized by the explosion of cyberattacks, making cybercrime one of the most profitable businesses on the planet. That is why training in cybersecurity is increasingly essential to protect the assets of cyberspace. One of the most vital tools to train cybersecurity competencies is the Cyber Range, a virtualized environment that simulates realistic networks. The paper at hand introduces SCORPION, a fully functional and virtualized Cyber Range, which manages the authoring and automated deployment of scenarios. In addition, SCORPION includes several elements to improve student motivation, such as a gamification system with medals, points, or rankings, among other elements. Such a gamification system includes an adaptive learning module that is able to adapt the cyberexercise based on the users' performance. Moreover, SCORPION leverages learning analytics that collects and processes telemetric and biometric user data, including heart rate through a smartwatch, which is available through a dashboard for instructors. Finally, we developed a case study where SCORPION obtained 82.10% in usability and 4.57 out of 5 in usefulness from the viewpoint of a student and an instructor. The positive evaluation results are promising, indicating that SCORPION can become an effective, motivating, and advanced cybersecurity training tool to help fill current gaps in this context.Comment: 31 page