Towards a design theory for educational on-line information security laboratories

  • Authors:
  • Sarfraz Iqbal;Tero Päivärinta

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå Tekniska Universitet, Luleå, Sweden;Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå Tekniska Universitet, Luleå, Sweden

  • Venue:
  • ICWL'12 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Advances in Web-Based Learning
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Online learning for educating information security professionals has increased in popularity. The security curriculum and technology, as well as hands-on laboratory experiences implemented in information security labs, are important elements in an online education system for information security. We drew our motivation from an on-going information security lab development initiative in our own institution, and this paper aims to provide an integrated overview on reported instances of online hands-on education in information security. Our review contributes to the existing knowledge by using the anatomy of design theory framework as a basis for literature analysis, as this provides a common basis to examine theories about human-created information technology artifacts such as information security labs and how such knowledge has been communicated to academia. Our results show that none of the articles studied here puts forward a well-grounded and tested design theory for on-line information security laboratories. This hinders accumulation of knowledge in this area and makes it difficult for others to observe, test and adapt clear design principles for security laboratories and exercises.