Case Study: Portland State University trains cybersecurity students in the cloud with Google for Education

Portland State cybersecurity students hunt malicious code in the cloud

Portland State University, with support from the National Science Foundation, needed to train cybersecurity students to hunt for software vulnerabilities using real-world tools and techniques. The challenge was to provide a safe, controlled, and repeatable hands-on environment for these exercises without risking their own on-premises infrastructure or local workstations.

Google for Education implemented a solution using Google Cloud, specifically Google Compute Engine virtual machines. This provided an ideal environment for deploying hands-on Capture the Flag challenges and curriculum, allowing students to safely hunt for malicious code. As a result, Dr. Feng is developing a pioneering open-source curriculum to share nationally, and students report that their experience with Google Cloud tools, including Kubernetes Engine, is directly helping them secure jobs in the field.

Portland State University

Wu-chang Feng

Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science