Hybrid Cybersecurity Research and Education Environment for Maritime Sector

Digitalization is a global trend affecting many crit-ical infrastructures, including maritime transportation. Incorpo-rating information and operational technologies into transportation processes significantly enhances efficiency but also introduces substantial risks originating from cyberspace. It is a significant endeavour to develop lab environments to research offensive and defensive aspects of cybersecurity and facilitate hands-on experience in educational settings. This paper introduces a hybrid cybersecurity research and education lab environment for the maritime domain. It enables real-world data to be fed into a controlled setting equipped with various emulation system components. The lab, which combines open-source and low-cost commercial software, also benefits from virtualization technologies and real hardware devices. Its scala-bility and affordability make it a viable solution for educational purposes. Although the environment is defended against external access, it can be provided for third parties on demand. We conducted a series of cyberattacks on the network and an open-source navigation application to demonstrate the effective-ness of our lab setting. The recorded and shared network traffic from these attacks not only serves as a fertile ground for our own research but also invites other researchers to develop and test their solutions, fostering a collaborative environment for the advancement of cybersecurity in the sector.