2022 EDSIG Proceedings: Abstract Presentation


Using GitLab for Education program for a collaborative Cyber Infrastructure among Cybersecurity educators, learners, and researchers across the Pennsylvania State University Commonwealth Campuses


John Landmesser
Penn State Brandywine

Jennifer Breese
Pennsylvania State University

Maryam Roshanaei
Pennsylvania State University - Abington College

Brian Gardner
Penn State Schuylkill



Penn State University College Cybersecurity Consortium of campuses train and prepare students with Cybersecurity Workforce Development skills needed to pursue different professional career opportunities linked to Cybersecurity Workforce Framework, NIST Special Publication 800-181. The consortium uses GitLab for Education program to build a collaborative community of Cybersecurity educators, learners, and researchers across the Pennsylvania State University Commonwealth Campuses. GitLab has provided an innovative Cyber Infrastructure (CI) with an agile DevSecOps focused, integrated, robust, trustworthy, and sustainable cloud environment to foster research-oriented thinking for collaborative undergraduate research projects. GitLab enables faculty mentors with integrated tools to facilitate remote, asynchronous full lifecycle undergraduate research projects breaking down previous physical, synchronous constraints on undergraduate research project teams.

GitLab DevOps delivers tools and practices automating processes between software development and IT teams to build, test, and release software faster and more reliably using continuous delivery of higher software quality from greater collaboration between developers and IT operations. Development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) automates the integration of security at every phase of the software development lifecycle, from initial design through integration, testing, deployment, and software delivery enabling secure software development at the speed of agile by using DevOps.

This case study focuses on documenting the Cybersecurity Consortium practices for cross campus collaboration on undergraduate research, shared curriculum development, and collaboration leveraging GitLab and Microsoft Teams appropriately since each tool suite has different strengths in providing an overall, physically unconstrainted, collaborative undergraduate research environment.

These collaborative Cybersecurity undergraduate research opportunities are important for innovation by getting students to think innovatively early in their collegiate careers in all facets of the research, scholarship, or creative processes. This includes conceptualization of a question or focus, proposal writing, identification and implementation of methods, and communication of results.

Thursday at 3:00 pm