News
College of Computing Cyber Range
October 24, 2024
During the spring of last year, the Cyber Range was introduced to GVSU’s Health Campus. After receiving NSA validation, a second Cyber Range was introduced to the Allendale Campus right before the summer of this year. Cybersecurity is more important today than ever before, and the GVSU College of Computing is doing its best to set students up to be successful in the field.
Each Cyber Range serves the same purpose, which is to provide students with resources to better their skills at detecting and understanding digital threats. The main program students use is called Kali Linux. It allows students to hack fake targets, usually posing as either a network or website. Throughout their experience, students learn some of the standard ways they might be targeted digitally.
There is no one attack though to be cautious of. Tim Denshaw, the Coordinator of the Cyber Range, said, “The threats from attackers are constantly evolving, but phishing attacks are some of the most common today.” Phishing itself can take many forms, and the skills gained through the use of the Cyber Range would help identify a phishing attack, but also understand it technologically.
The area of hacking addressed through the Cyber Range is described as ethical hacking. Ethical hacking sees an individual target another individual or organization through vulnerabilities in programs, websites, internal infrastructure and so on. The fake targets students attack include a variety of vulnerabilities. This allows students to be creative in their hacking methods. Tim Denshaw said some students have hacked targets in ways they did not even intend.
A variety of classes use the Cyber Range, but students are allowed to drop in anytime to enhance their skills. Cybersecurity safeness is important for more than Cybersecurity students as well. All College of Computing students can benefit from using the Cyber Range, as it is one of the most hands-on resources available to them.
The Allendale Cyber Range is located in Mackinac Hall room D-2-311 and the Downtown Cyber Range is located in Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences (CHS) in room CHS 189.
Article written by Maxwell Ritchie.