Welcome to our new Community, we are so happy that you have joined us and we'd love to get to know you all. Please introduce yourself in this thread by telling us a little bit about yourself and your experience with Immersive Labs and Cyber Security. I'm Kieran, the Director of Community here at Immersive Labs and I'm responsible for fostering this community, and leading our Cyber Million program which aims to help 1 Million people into cybersecurity jobs over the next decade. Prior to this I worked with the UK NCSC to design and deliver the inaugural program of CyberFirst events, a pioneering initiative aimed at inspiring and encouraging 14 - 18 year olds to consider careers in cybersecurity. I'm a member of the UK Cyber Security Council's Qualifications Careers Working Group and carried out extensive research into the UK's Cyber Security Skills Gap as part of my MSc in Cyber Security. I live in South West England, where you can often find me running on the trails, or running after my 7 year old son. I look forward to meeting you all Kieran

Hi everyone, it is great to see a good community coming together to support the best practices in Cyber Security and sharing experiences (And Solving Labs).I am Antony, I am currently a Team Lead for the army CPT (Cyber Protection Teams), I have been using the Immersive Labs platform to support my learning in Cyber Security for the last 2 years between more formalised academic courses. Prior to that I have years of experience doing various jobs throughout the MOD all centred around communications and IT. I use the IL platform to enhance training activity for my teams and use it especially before deployments to sharpen skills. Glad to be here at the start and watch the community grow.RgdsAnt

Hello to the community!My name is Ben McCarthy and I have been working at Immersive for 6 years now and have watched it grow to the platform it is today. Cyber security is a huge passion of mine, and I spend a lot of time reverse engineering for malware analysis or exploit development. I have reversed engineered malware that people are unaware of and have found exploits in production software that has gone through disclosure. If anyone wants to discuss these with me I will chat forever!I lead the cyber threat intelligence team here at Immersive where we release labs on the latest threats against our customers industries within 24 hours - this involves CVEs, latest malware trends and emerging threats. It can be stressful but also very fun.I can't introduce myself without talking about the new addition to my household; I have a rescue cat called "Cat"; he is about 15, has one eye and three teeth, and is the most loving animal! Here he is :)

Hi Awesome People,I'm Steven, your friendly neighborhood Technical Product Manager with a serious passion for all things tech (think CCIE, Networking, Security, FreeBSD, Linux, Software Development—the whole geeky shebang!). I like to think of myself as a bit of a hybrid at Swisscom, juggling a bunch of tasks that go way beyond what you'd expect from your typical PM. So yeah, you could say I like keeping things… interesting!When I’m not busy saving the world one packet at a time, I’m embracing the chaos at home with my two incredible daughters as well my wife and our furry overlords—aka five cats. Yes, you heard that right, five. I live near Zurich, Switzerland, where I also disappear in lakes and rivers as a diving instructor. Because why not? Who says you can't go from deep diving into code to deep diving in the seas?Oh, and did I mention I love traveling? There's nothing quite like hitting the road and exploring new cultures and countries. Just last month, I wrapped up a 3-week epic road trip that took me from Switzerland all the way through Turkey, Georgia, and up to Armenia—all by car! It was an adventure filled with incredible landscapes, rich history, and of course, some very interesting driving experiences!Looking forward to sharing ideas, having some fun, and learning from this awesome community. And who knows? Maybe we’ll swap cat stories or scuba adventures along the way!Catch you around!ps: as you shared your animals, here are my beasts! :)BijouJamieMimiNeo Flocke

Hi everyone. I'm echoing Kieran's sentiment that we’re so excited to welcome and get to know our community members! I’m Tilly, the Lead Program Manager for the Immersive Labs community, which I'm very much looking forward to growing with all of our members 🤝 I’ve been an employee at Immersive for two years and prior to this I project managed our Cyber Resilience Team customer projects, working particularly closely with Cyber Crisis Simulations. We have a top-class team of Cyber Resilience Advisors and I hope that some of you are lucky enough to work with them throughout your Immersive journey. In my spare time, I love to be outdoors - whether that’s running, gardening, busking with my band or exploring the countryside with my dog. Pleased to meet you! Drop a intro with a note about yourself in this Welcome Forum ⬇️

Ok, introduction time.I'm Viktor, married with kids, living near Zürich, Switzerland. Boring, right? Not so fast... I was born, in the same year, the FTP protocol was invented. However, I did not learn about its existence for another 25 years or so... My first computer was a Commodore 64, for which I was saving every red penny I got for birthdays and similar events, as well as working in my spare time (vaction jobs). I can't even tell, why I was fascinated by computers from a very young age, but the fascination has never diminished.Today I'm a senior engineer at Swisscom, responsible for network and security topics in a VoIP environment. My career-path was not straightforward, because my interest for computers actually prevented me from studying information technology on university level. Sounds strange? Not really - at the time I was so focussed on computers, that I completely ignored all other topics such as e.g. biology, history, french etc. that one SHOULD have learned at the time to get approved to a university. So I went into banking, from where I got into the IT department of that bank (assembling computers etc.), somehow landed at EUnet (the first pan-european internet provider), where I was confronted with lots of new stuff such as Unix and networking. Then I was thrown into a technical security role and just a few years later I was the head of IT at a small financial company.After being diagnosed with cancer and recovering from it I decided, to work less and enjoy life more. So I'm not a manager anymore - I went back to engineering. More fun, less responsibility. And I'm having a great deal of fun solving labs on the Immersive Labs platform.In my spare time I'm currently experimenting with GenAI (who isn't?) and trying not to fall into the "Netflix-and-Chill" trap. Often unsuccessfully. I also like to organize stuff. Parties, Events, Travel. I sometimes actually enjoy the oganization more than the actual event.While most people usually say, they like travelling, I'm a little more specific: I like to travel in the USA. So far it's been 21 trips to the USA and I still have a huge bucket-list of things I want to see. I also actively participate in specific USA-travel-forums online and like the exchange with others on this topic.Cheers,ViktorSpider Rock in Canyon de Chelly (taken with an iPhone :-))

Introductions | Immersive Labs Community

Mel
Bronze I
2 months ago
Hi! I'm Mel, Services Operations at Saepio and working with our partner Immersive. Have been here almost 3 years, started out as Cyber Security Advisor. Loving the crisis sims and getting great feedback from potential customers. Attended the London Sim event which was fantastic!
- KieranRowley
  Community Manager
  2 months ago
  Hi Mel it was great to meet you at the London Cyber Drill and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Welcome to the Human Connection!
Bluesman
Bronze II
2 months ago
Hello everybody!
My name is Rafael, currently working in a banking institution, leading the S-SDLC area.
My first memory is with Commodore 64 (I'm a few years old :)) ... tinkering with its BASIC.
I met Immersive Labs thanks to an initiative of my Organization, and since then, every week, I have challenged myself to be a little more curious, to study, to learn and to complete labs.
And to this day, leading the ranking in my organization!
I could not mention all the tools and tactics that thanks to Immersive Labs I have learned about; I am especially interested in CVEs, malware analysis, code debugging and new techniques!.
Here's to many more labs with Immersive!
- KieranRowley
  Community Manager
  2 months ago
  Hi Rafael, welcome once again to our community! It's so nice to hear from our customers about how Immersive Labs is having a positive impact
CourtneyGuss
Immerser
3 months ago
Hello Everyone! This is so much fun getting to know you all. My name is Courtney, and I manage our Strategic Alliances and Partner program here at Immersive Labs. I have a cybersecurity, risk management, and risk quantification background, and I love how we're working to address the people's risk side of what we do!

In my free time - and work time - I LOVE to travel. I recently had the chance to go to Australia for the first time, and it was spectacular! I also have a 14-year-old daughter who keeps me very busy - and the dog, of course!

I am excited to be part of the community!
bchallener
Immerser
3 months ago
Hi everyone! So many wonderful friendly faces. My name is Brandon Challener and I manage part of our North American Customer Success team at Immersive Labs. I have been here for close to 4 years now and have been a part of so many wonderful growth stories and exciting successes. I'm so thrilled to be now apart of this community to hear from all of you and to engage at a deeper level to make one's successes all of yours. My wife and I live in Portland, Maine where we enjoy all of the amazing restaurants and nature that is right at our finger tips.👋
autom8on
Bronze III
2 months ago
Hola,
I'm Steve. Been using the platform since the early trials back in 2018. Currently sat on ~259K points and 1,683 labs completed. Run regular drop-in calls at my employer to try and encourage people and keep them pointed in the right direction (whilst continuously nagging them about keeping better notes!).
Been "hacking" things since my parents foolishly gave me a ZX81 a very long time ago. Work-wise, I've been involved in "cyber" since the mid 1990's (where I started my career as a research scientist for the MoD) - am a recovering CHECK Team Leader (#19!)(and used to sit on the TigerScheme technical panel, as well as invigilating CHECK exams at PGI) - and still keep my hand in doing the odd penetration test here and there, though my main passion these days is for physical security, I've mostly had enough of computers. ;-p
Outside of work, I'm mostly found wandering around with the hound, running lock picking villages at conferences, or hiding in Virtual Reality (it's so much better than Reality Reality! ;-p).
- KieranRowley
  Community Manager
  2 months ago
  Hi Steve! I certainly remember you from way back in 2018. It's great to be reconnected, welcome to the Human Connection.
gmkingsley
Bronze I
15 days ago
Hi fellow community members,
I am dipping my toe in the community pool. I am curious how effective this will be in providing the support and information, I may need in my unique role with the utilization of this product. As an example, was the new catalog that was released in October introduced to the community? Also, is there any polling of the community for product/service roadmap?
- KieranRowley
  Community Manager
  15 days ago
  Hi gmkingsley - welcome to the community!
  
  For help and support with all things Immersive Labs, please check out the Help & Support Forum.
  
  We are hoping to foster a collaborative environment here where our users come together to share ideas on how to get the most out of Immersive Labs (not just lab hints!) so please do post your questions there.
  
  All of our new products, features and content are announced in monthly release notes (the next one is coming tomorrow). We also host quarterly roadmap webinars. Both of these are exclusively for customers. I notice that you did not sign up to the community using the customer registration option, but I can see that you are a customer, so I have given you the correct access. You should now be able to access Product Updates and Customer Events
  
  Come and join us for our next roadmap webinar on Thursday Immerse Yourself: Customer Roadmap Overview
  - Gene
    Bronze II
    15 days ago
    When I click on "Product Updates" or "Customer Events" or "Immerse Yourself: Customer Roadmap Overview" I get "Board no longer available" popping up on my screen, and am not brought to the intended target but am left here.
NigelWright
Immerser
3 months ago
Wow awesome KieranRowley Cool picture, Which (trail) event was your favourite?
- KieranRowley
  Community Manager
  3 months ago
  This photo was taken at UTS Snowdonia earlier this year. My favourite place to run (or just exist tbh) is Gower in Wales.
AndyMckay
Bronze I
2 months ago
Cool, will do! And thanks for the friendly welcome Tilly 😊