Real-Time Simulation and Workforce Development with TROY: Testbed for Resilient Operational Systems

The rise of attacks against operational technology (OT) systems has established a need for reliable and accurate means of education and analysis of cybersecurity for critical infrastructures (CI) and industrial control systems (ICS). The authors respond by proposing TROY: Testbed for Resilient Operational sYstems, a virtual IT & OT environment equipped with a Typhoon-HIL real-time simulator for CI emulation. TROY's network architectures are compliant with the NIST 800-82r3 standards and allow for workforce development by incorporating cybersecurity curriculum that utilizes the testbed as a learning platform. TROY addresses current challenges by providing a realistic and scalable research platform supporting high-fidelity simulations and supplying the workforce with hands-on experience in fundamental cybersecurity concepts in a virtual classroom in NETLAB+.