DeterLab is the primary scientific computing facility for cyber-security researchers worldwide.  DeterLab provides the resources, tools, and infrastructure for researchers to conduct rigorous, repeatable experiments with new security technologies, and test their effectiveness in a realistic environment similar to the public and private networks in which new cyber defenses are needed.

Since 2003, with funding from NSF, DHS, and DARPA, DeterLab has grown into a facility where over 2000 researchers have conducted network and cyber-security experimentation. At the same time, DeterLab has expanded in scale and power, as the DETER Project team has added both new computing resources, and a variety of new scientific capabilities that have resulted from DETER’s research efforts. Today, DeterLab is one of the largest facilities devoted to providing experimental resources and scientific expertise for the development, experimentation, and testing of innovative cyber-defense technology.

A Shared Experimentation Facility

DeterLab Workbench: Catalog of Available Network Designs

Designed specifically for large-scale cyber-security research, DeterLab provides an open, remotely accessible, shared network research lab. Facilities include networking and computing resources, and an expanding set of tools for using them to construct and operate experiments. DeterLab’s users are cyber-security researchers and experimenters who typically work in project teams. The focus of a project’s activity is a construct called an “experiment,” a term that applies to any kind of DeterLab work, including:

• Observation of cyber-attack and cyber-defense technologies,
• Test-driven development of innovative cyber-defenses,
• Scientific test and measurement of the effectiveness of cyber-security innovations,
• Experimentation with multiple approaches to using a cyber-defense technology, and
• Scientific assessment of hypotheses about cyber-attack and cyber-defense technology in action.

For any of these activities, DETER's experiment lifecycle approach is central to enabling DeterLab experimenters to rapidly construct and easily manage experiments of significant scale and complexity. As a result, experimenters can quickly progress to real scientific activity, focusing on experiment operation, observation, and iteration – rather than the nuts and bolts of the computing and network resources that the experiment uses.

Research and Cyber-Security Science

DeterLab Workbench: Running a Complete Experiment

The DETER Project team, which operates and enhances DeterLab, maintains an active research program of its own.  That work focuses on methods and technology for cyber-security research – in a scientific lab setting that supports collaboration, re-use and sharing between experimenters.  Resulting capabilities and resources frequently are transferred to DeterLab, enabling the facility to offer the continually evolving, leading-edge capabilities crucial for rapid research advances.
 
The goal for these enhancements is to evolve DeterLab in to an advanced scientific instrument for the kind of repeatable experimentation that is required for the science of cyber-security. Whether the scientific activity is experimentation, investigation, or testing, DeterLab provides the ability for the community of researchers to view, recreate, and validate one another's work. Researchers can publish not only reports of experimental results, but also the information needed for other scientists to validate the work and build on it in a truly scientific manner.

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