2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The increasing demand for versatile and mobile computing has made pervasive computing a crucial component of the high-performance, low-cost computing paradigm for research and education. While existing efforts have developed cybersecurity curricula, platforms, and hands-on labs for cloud, mobile, and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), the core properties of pervasive computing remain insufficiently covered. This paper addresses these challenges by comprehensively covering security and privacy in pervasive computing. We develop curricula and hands-on labs that systematically address the essential properties of pervasive computing. Rather than simply combining materials from previous efforts, we compare existing cybersecurity education work and explore intrinsic connections, overlaps, and combinations. Our curricula aim to provide students with a thorough understanding of security and privacy in pervasive computing. We then present the ReScuE, a free and cloud-based cyber range that is scalable, safe, easy to set up and maintain, and facilitates high privileges for educators to oversee students' hands-on practice progress. To facilitate widespread adoption, we develop a set of virtual-machine- and container-based hands-on labs on top of the ReScuE, covering various disciplines of pervasive computing for different educational purposes. Each lab includes progressive hands-on practices, defined knowledge units, and learning outcomes based on the CSEC 2017 Curricular Guidelines, ensuring consistent quality and broader adoption. After iterative development and multiple pilot assessments, we conducted formal evaluations from 2018 to 2022 at two institutions. We define research questions for our pedagogic research through continuous refinement with student feedback. Our study demonstrates that the ReScuE labs received high satisfaction ratings from students with diverse ethnic and academic backgrounds before and during the COVID-19 lockdowns. The comprehensive coverage of pervasive computing cybersecurity allows students to learn state-of-the-art research findings, gain hands-on experiences with recent software, and engage with cutting-edge cybersecurity technology. Finally, we share the lessons we learned from our study, make ReScuE lab materials available to the public, and aim to benefit the broader audience of cybersecurity education.