QCTaaS (Quality Cloud Teaching as a Service): An Immersive Framework for Teaching Cloud Computing for Cybersecurity Majors
Mahmoud K. Quweider, Liyu Zhang, Alexis De La Cruz · 2024
Cloud Computing and Cybersecurity are at the heart of our recently created new bachelor-level degree in cybersecurity that addresses the national need for cybersecurity specialists.Cloud Computing involves many service models, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, and many deployment models, including Public, Private, and Hybrid clouds.Within the services and deployment models lie many concepts and practical implementations that a Cyber-analyst needs to master.We have adopted an immersive approach to teaching Cloud Computing services that introduces standard concepts based on clearly defined objectives from national certification authorities such as CompTIA Cloud+, covering all significant services offered by the big three players Amazon (AWS), Google (GCP), and Microsoft (Azure).These services include instances and managed instance groups, storage classes, compute engines, databases, and big data.Theoretical concepts are supplanted with hands-on labs taught by graduate students.In subsequent upper-level courses, students must use some of the services they learned in the upper-level courses to get a real feeling about the setup, operation, monitoring, management, and maintenance of a cloud-based business.This paper covers our academic, hands-on, immersive approach to our newly developed CTaaS framework.In particular, we will present:• The list of ten teaching modules:o Description of each module.o The list of objectives and sub-objectives for each module.o Topics covered by Cloud+ certification.• Collaboration with major cloud providers:o Acquisition of a small grant for free student credit.o Public cloud platforms used in class.• The list of hands-on labs:o Delivery method of each lab o Design of lab by instructor/graduate students.▪ Delivery of lab by graduate students.▪ Feedback mechanism.• Mechanisms for enforcing cloud computing concepts and services:o Through projects and assignments.o Through targeted upper-level courses.o Through individualized capstone projects.•