Chapter 11. Building a Lab

Learning the art of exploitation and penetration tests in the field of cybersecurity is exciting and fascinating for both students and professionals. The idea of hacking is quite cool, but when learning about cybersecurity, such as penetration testing, an institution, such as a technical college or university, usually sets up a physical lab environment to conduct training. Learning ethical hacking and penetration testing should only be taught using systems designed and built for such training; in other words, penetration testing should definitely not be taught using systems available on the internet or those that do not provide consent for such testing.

To get started with penetration testing, you should set up a lab. Having your own lab will eliminate certain constraints, such as physically being within the training institution to access their lab. Also, the lab's availability and portability will be unrestricted.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics...