Cyber Security Home Lab

Home labs are indispensable cybersecurity practical playgrounds for security professionals. But, creating a home lab can be quite fazing for someone without the know-how.

So, we’ve made this article an easy compendium that’ll guide you all the way through.

What’s A Cybersecurity Home Lab?

Ask any security professional out there. You realize that a home lab is a simple prototype of everything you expect in a particular network.

It’s only in a small-scale environment. It’s a virtual machine built in a cubicle within your house. And you can only work with a few different components of a larger network at once.

Despite that, home labs are still great for experiential learning. They help hone your skills, provide safe settings where you can try out new software, and help keep you out of lock-and-keys.

As for that last part, let’s expound on things a bit. Sometimes, different components of trial technology may contain viruses that can damage vital hardware. This malware may even corrupt the entire network and the internet at large. When that happens, you may get arrested.

But, with a well-established home lab, you can interact with such tools without the fear of landing behind bars. This, plus a few other reasons, is why home labs are important.

Now, the thing is, you will find different cybersecurity home labs out there. But the most common cybersecurity home lab uses a method called Virtualization.

This virtualization will allow you to create the virtual essence of different computer systems on single computer hardware (say your PC). Besides that, it will allow you to run several operating systems at the same time.

But to do this, you will need a hypervisor like Oracle VirtualBox and a couple of other things. Today, there are several kinds of virtual machines. But we’ll save that till later.

What Resources Do You Need to Set Up A Homelab?

The resources you need to create a home lab from scratch vary. This variation depends on whether you plan to host your virtual machine locally or in the cloud.

We will choose one of the simplest and most inexpensive hosting methods—the local-host virtualization method. Using this, you will need the following components and services:

1. Hardware Components

There’s no standard for these components. Your choice depends on the number of intending operating systems (OS), virtualization software, services, and workload. To cater to such factors, security professionals prefer to create their PCs.

As a beginner, we would expect you already have a personal laptop or desktop. So, we’ll save you the stress of building. But you need to research more and ensure that your PC meets the following standard configuration:

A CPU with at least a 4-core, Intel or AMD processor
A 500 GB–1TB hard disk drive (HDD) or Solid-state drive (SSD—recommended)
2 GB Video card (recommended)
An Optical CD-ROM or DVD.
Minimum of 4 GB RAM. Though 8 -16 GB is recommended.

Likewise, you can also get other tools like a virtualization server, a wireless adapter, and an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS).

2. Software Components

There are lots of software technologies you can use for your virtual machine. But let’s list the major ones you need below:

The virtualization software (aka hypervisors) – Out there, you can choose any of the following services that work for you:

VMware fusion – updated versions are quite expensive. But free trials are available.
VirtualBox – a free and inexpensive virtualization software from Oracle.
VMWare ESXi – some features are available for free.
VMWare workstation – also free for personal use.

Operating system (aka Workstations) – The most popular ones are:

Windows– Windows 10 and other updated versions of Windows server.
Linux Distributions – any Linux server and distribution can be a good security onion
Ubuntu server
mac OS and other operating systems.

A software firewall and a vulnerability scanner– Common ones are:

Glasswire – User-friendly. Though, the free mode is too limited.
pfSense – is free and has a lot of cool features in free mode.
Acunetix

How to Set Up A Cybersecurity Home Lab on A Budget

You’re already halfway done once you meet the virtual machine system requirements. Just follow these steps in tandem to get started:

1. Download and Install Your Chosen Hypervisor.

You can choose Oracle VirtualBox if you’re looking for an inexpensive method to set up your home lab. Otherwise, VMWare fusion is an excellent alternative if you want to spend some dough. But you can research more hypervisors at your leisure.

That said, let’s run you through how you can install Vmware Fusion or Oracle VirtualBox.

Search, sign up and download a Vmware package from the Vmware official website or VirtualBox services from here.
Click on the downloaded Disk Image (DMG) file and save it into a preferred folder.
In the file, double-click the Vmware or VirtualBox install icon and follow the prompts to install.
Sometimes, a version update and user login may be required. Fill in your users’ details and follow the prompt to update.
On completion, a Vmware fusion home-page dialogue box will pop up. This box allows you to install a new guest OS from a disc or file. As for VirtualBox, you will see a success page.
Install and attend to the configuration of your software firewall like pfSense.

This helps shield your network of computers from the internet, malware, and unauthorized access. It also helps to regulate traffic. You can learn more about setting up pfSense in this youtube video.

2. Test Your Network By Setting Up An Operating System.

Flickr Image by Dunk 🐝

To do this:

Select your preferred operating system, whether windows server, ubuntu server, Linux distributions, or mac.
Visit the official Linux, windows, or mac website, and ensure your PC meets the edition requirement for installation and download.
Install using the ISO or DMG file and follow the prompt settings.
Enter your credentials (like password and product key) and wait for the installation wizard to finish the configurations.

Conclusion

In this article, we clarified that a cyber lab hones the skills of a cyber rookie and saves security professionals from legal issues.

To set up your cybersecurity lab, you need a good PC, a hypervisor, a software firewall, and a good VMWare workstation. Once you have all those requirements, you need to do a few things to set up a simple and inexpensive cybersecurity home lab.

cybersecurity home lab