October is here! Prepare for Cybersecurity Awareness Month with Immersive 🎃
In a world where technology and threats are constantly evolving, building a resilient team is more important than ever. At Immersive, we're proud to be your partner in this journey, and we've put together a fantastic lineup of events, challenges, and resources throughout October to help you and your teams stay ahead of the curve. What’s on at Immersive this Cybersecurity Awareness Month 📆 Oct 1st Whitepaper: GenAI’s Impact on Cybersecurity Skills and Training Oct 6th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge Begins: Labs 1-3 Oct 9th Labs Live: Ripper's Riddle Community Webinar Oct 13th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge: Labs 4 - 6 Oct 15th Webinar: How to Build a People-Centric Defense for AI-Driven Attacks Oct 16th Labs Live: Cursed Canvas Community Webinar Oct 20th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge: Labs 7 - 9 Oct 22nd Cyber Resilience Customer Awards Winners Revealed Oct 23rd Labs Live: Macro Polo Community Webinar Oct 27th Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge: Labs 10-12 Oct 30th Labs Live: Phantom Pages Webinar Oct 31st Trick or Treat on Specter Street Challenge Finale: Labs 13 Oct 31st Virtual Crisis Sim: The Puppet Master’s Trick or Treat Challenges and Labs Trick or Treat on Specter Street 👻 Welcome to Trick or Treat on Specter Street, a Halloween-themed cybersecurity challenge where you'll use both offensive and defensive skills to solve a mystery unlike anything we’ve encountered before. Each week throughout October, we’ll drop new hands-on labs that slowly begin to uncover the secrets of Specter Street. Can you crack the case? Find out more. AI Foundations 🤖 Ready to navigate the rapidly evolving world of Artificial Intelligence with confidence? Give our new AI Foundations lab collection a go! Designed to equip your teams with critical AI knowledge and practical implementation skills; this initial collection features seven foundational labs that progressively guide your teams from high-level overviews to secure, hands-on AI implementation. Find out more. Events and Webinars Webinar How to Build a People-Centric Defense for AI-Driven Attacks Wednesday October 15th A must-attend event for understanding how threat actors are leveraging AI and other emerging technologies to carry out attacks. Register Now. Virtual Crisis Sim The Puppet Master’s Trick or Treat Friday October 31st Join us on Halloween as the notorious Puppet Master returns for a fiendish game of Trick or Treat 🎃 Play along with our Immersive crisis response experts as we tackle a LIVE coordinated attack from the Puppet Master on a Critical National Infrastructure organization. Dare you play the Puppet Master’s game and survive, or will they finally get their revenge?! Register Now. AI and Emerging Threats Throughout the month, we’re shining a spotlight on the rise of AI in cyber. From our all-new AI Foundational lab series to cutting edge research from the experts at the cutting edge of GenAI in cybersecurity in our latest whitepaper: GenAI’s Impact on Cybersecurity Skills and Training. Explore our latest AI-focused resources and upskill your teams to confidently face the future of cyber resilience. Check out our latest reports, articles, webinars and more on GenAI, here. Celebrating Cyber Resilience Heroes 🏆 We're also celebrating the individuals and organizations at the forefront of cyber resilience with our Cyber Resilience Customer Awards. Keep your eyes peeled on our social channels! We'll be unveiling our latest winners on October 22nd, recognizing those who demonstrate an outstanding commitment to proving and improving their cyber readiness. It's going to be a jam-packed month focused on practical application and deep engagement. Let’s make this the most secure October yet!A Step-by-Step Guide to Hosting Your Own Hacktober Event
Organizing engaging, informative, and enjoyable cybersecurity events like Swisscom's Hacktober event doesn't have to be daunting. With strategic groundwork and relevant, interactive challenges, you can create a cybersecurity event that is both fun and educational. Are you considering hosting a similar cybersecurity event? This blog provides a step-by-step guide to creating an impactful event, resulting in a more skilled and prepared workforce.
Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Customer Awards!
This Cybersecurity Results Month we’re acknowledging the organizations and individuals who have shown exceptional dedication to learning and defending against emerging threats, building organizational resilience and pushing the boundaries of their cybersecurity knowledge through the Immersive Labs platform. Collectively, our customers have completed tens of thousands of labs, and after crunching the numbers, we’re ready to celebrate just some of the winners amongst exceptional individuals and organizations that have excelled in 2024 across the following categories: 👾 Emerging Threats Award The Emerging Threats award recognizes the organizations and individuals at the forefront of threat detection and threat hunting. Taking into consideration the total number of Cyber Threat Intelligence labs completed, as well as the average time to complete and respond to every new CTI lab, we’re rewarding the best and brightest for their diligence and dedication in responding to the latest threats quickly and effectively. 🏆 Emerging Threats Award Organization Winners: Cisco Systems Swisscom Arctic Wolf InfoGuard Specsavers BT Group Their proactive approach to the completion of CTI labs has set them apart as leaders in cybersecurity defense. Congratulations on your exemplary performance! 🏆 Emerging Threats Award Individual Winners: steven Steven Glogger, Swisscom Anonymous Paul Blance, Specsavers Steffen Wacker, Arctic Wolf These record-holding individuals are second to none for completed CTI labs this year! Congratulations on your exemplary performance! 🛡️ Cyber Resilience Award The Cyber Resilience award recognizes those organizations that are maximizing the full use of the Immersive Labs platform to fully optimize their end to end cyber resilience. The award zeroes in on the breadth and depth of coverage across the MITRE ATT&CK framework, and identifies those organizations that have taken it upon themselves to build Immersive Labs fully into their own cyber resilience program. 🏆 Cyber Resilience Award Winners: BT Group Swisscom Arctic Wolf Their comprehensive approach to cyber resilience, maximizing the capabilities of the Immersive Labs platform, has put them at the forefront of cyber defense strategies. They’ve not only protected their organization but set a standard for the industry. 🔥 Immersive Labs Trailblazer Award Our final award, the Immersive Labs Trailblazer award recognizes those individuals that simply love Immersive Labs - they have been our top point scorers since Jan 1st 2024, completing thousands of labs and truly immersing themselves in the platform. These individuals go above and beyond their assigned learning programs to upskill and explore content outside of their day to day roles and responsibilities. 🏆 Immersive Labs Trailblazer Award Winners: J Nicholas Autumn, UK Home Office steven Steven Glogger, Swisscom Steffen Wacker, Arctic Wolf Their commitment to learning and exploring every corner of the Immersive Labs platform sets them apart as a true cybersecurity trailblazer. Congratulations to all of the winners for setting the best-in-class standard as we grow and enhance our cyber resilience, together 👏Face Your Fears this Halloween and Return to Haunted Hollow
🧛♀️ Brace yourselves, brave souls! The haunted season has returned, and with it, an all-new cybersecurity adventure—Halloween 2024: Return to Haunted Hollow. The sinister spirits of cyberspace await you in this terrifying sequel to our 2023 Halloween collection, The Haunted Hollow. This is no mere challenge—it’s an eerie expedition through 9 haunted labs designed to test your skills and sanity alike. Whether you're a seasoned crypt keeper of the cybersecurity world or a curious newcomer, there's a fright waiting for everyone in this immersive capture-the-flag experience! 🔮 From unraveling encrypted secrets to hunting ghosts in packet captures, every lab holds the key to defeating the horrors lurking within. Can you escape the Haunted Helpdesk, break the Encryption Enigma, or uncover the Spooky, Scary, Silly Snaps? Each step you take deeper into this digital graveyard will challenge your mind and test your courage, until you can break out of the park through the Emergency Exit! 🕷️ With a difficulty ranging from approachable to spine-chillingly tough, it’s not about conquering all the horrors—just enough to emerge from the shadows with your sanity intact. Gather your wits, grab your digital lantern, and get ready to explore the most terrifying corners of cyber horror! 🧛 Release Date: October 16th ⌛ Estimated Time to Complete: 5 hours 👻 Labs: 9, each more terrifying than the last 🎃 Difficulty Range: 2-6 🧟 Collection Type: Challenge Lab details Note: These labs can be completed in any order, but we have ordered them from most accessible to most challenging. The final lab can only be completed after the other labs have been completed. The prequel collection doesn’t need to be completed before you can dive into these labs, but if you're craving some extra chills and thrills, feel free to haunt them first! Phishing for Treats Difficulty: 2 Skills required: None – this lab should be accessible to all audiences What's involved: This lab is a new phishing emails lab, with Halloween-themed emails. Users have to identify whether the email is 'safe' or 'spam' based on indicators from the emails. PCAP Pandemonium Difficulty: 4 Skills required: Packet capture analysis (Wireshark) What's involved: In this lab, users will need to analyse multiple packet captures using Wireshark to identify answers to the questions from the network traffic. Delving Deeper Difficulty: 4 Skills required: Web application enumeration What's involved: Users will need to explore a web application in order to gain access to a computer terminal within the application. From there, they'll need to interact with a simple API. Encryption Enigma Difficulty: 5 Skills required: Modern encryption/encoding techniques (Knowledge of how to use CyberChef will be useful) What's involved: Users will need to identify the correct encoding and encryption technique used to obfuscate each message in an application, before decrypting/decoding each message. Confusing Code Difficulty: 5 Skills required: Linux enumeration techniques, reverse engineering (particularly using Ghidra) What's involved: Users will need to use Linux enumeration techniques to identify a binary, before reverse engineering that binary to figure out how to exploit it. Haunted Helpdesk Difficulty: 5 Skills required: Linux enumeration and privilege escalation techniques What's involved: Users will be dropped into a restricted environment. From there, they'll need to figure out how to escape, and escalate their privileges to root. Fearsome Forensics Difficulty: 6 Skills required: OSINT, web application enumeration, modern encryption techniques, steganography What's involved: In this lab, the user will need to explore the web application and discover clues using OSINT techniques. These clues will then be used to decipher encrypted messages, finally revealing how to extract a message hidden inside an image. Spooky, Scary, Silly Snaps Difficulty: 6 Skills required: AWS capabilities (particularly S3 and AWS permissions), Python scripting What's involved: Users will need to enumerate public S3 resources to identify credentials for an AWS account. From here, they'll need to interact with the AWS console, and identify a way of escalating their privileges on AWS. Emergency Exit Difficulty: 1 Skills required: None – this lab is a culmination of the preceding labs within the collection, but no specific skills are required to complete this lab. What's involved: In each of the labs in this collection, users would have been asked to make a note of a code. In this lab, they need to submit each of these codes. Share Your Thoughts Did you escape the Haunted Hollow? We'd love to hear from you! Remember you can post in our Help & Support Forum for hints, tips & collaboration from your fellow community of experts.Announcing the Cybersecurity Results Month 2024 Awards🏆
As we celebrate Cybersecurity Results Month, it's time to recognize the organizations and individuals who have shown exceptional dedication to learning and defending against emerging threats, building organizational resilience and pushing the boundaries of their cybersecurity knowledge through the Immersive Labs platform.
