Network Security Testbeds

Topic: Is there a need for a network security test bed?

Findings:

In the immediate term, a test bed is needed to test and deploy capabilities and to see how the community of users and network engineers respond to them. The potential value of testbeds in verifying the usability of security designs should not be overlooked.

Currently available ones, such as DETER or Cyber Range, are small in scale, have limits on the acceptable range of what can be tested or are classified and therefore unavailable for non-classified research.

Recommendations:

A network security test bed should be built on the GENI infrastructure.

Attack traffic datasets would be a useful component of a testbed environment.

Additionally, applications that run on GENI (and other experimental test bed networks) should include security metrics and a discussion of security considerations.

All new network architectures must include a security model.