Community Newsletter - May 2025
Hello once again from Immersive HQ where we are preparing to host our next in-person community meetup tomorrow (May 7th). If you'd like to join us for another evening of professional networking and cybersecurity talks please RSVP Here. 🎁 Community Challenge Season 1 Finale ICYMI yesterday we announced an exciting end to Season 1 of the Human Connection Challenge with some great prizes up for grabs including: 🥇 Tickets, Flights & Accommodation to an Immersive Summit in NYC or London 🥈 2 x PlayStation®5 Consoles 🥉 10 x Apple AirPods or JBL Headphones 👕 Much coveted Immersive swag and goodies! You can read all about the competition (including full terms and conditions) here. 🏆 The Human Connection Challenge Over 300 of you attempted this month's challenge, and 22 completed it before the deadline! 🥇 First to Finish Once again steven completed the lab just a few hours after it's release! ⏱️ Fastest to Complete Markus was the fastest to complete in 1 hour 20 minutes. 🎯 Most Accurate Despite the difficulty, the following members all got 100% accuracy in their first attempt: barney autom8on CyberSharpe IotS2024 edgarloredo Markus CBAM964 Xat BigChungus Al13nz steven 💪 Most Persistent The most persistent also goes to steven who spent nearly 9 hours in total in the lab... what were you up to in there? Congratulations to all of our winners! If you haven't completed it yet you can find the walkthrough here. And remember, for every challenge lab that you have completed by 2nd June you get an extra entry in the Season Finale Prize Draw! 📰 Community Updates Here are some of my favourite community articles from the last month: The Softer Side: Non-technical Benefits to Technical Team Exercises It can be easy to focus readiness programs solely on individual upskilling and technical capability, but we rarely use these skills in isolation in real-world situations. In this article JennyLam discusses how technical exercising can be an effective way of taking those skills to the next level, applying them to different scenarios and less-than-ideal circumstances. Decoding Coding: Picking a Language In this article, BarnyStewart provides guidance and tips for anyone interested in coding who isn’t a professional developer. The first step in the coding journey is picking a language, and this article will take you through the options. An Ounce of Prevention Beats a Pound of Postmortem with Supply Chain Security EllaBendrickChartier's latest article dissects the hidden dangers in your supply chain, from compromised tools to vendor vulnerabilities, and shows you how to build a proactive security culture with Immersive Labs and Crisis Simulations. Secure Code Comments: One Easy Way to Steward Your Application Security Culture Application Security Content Engineer RobertKlentzeris explores how incorporating security-focused comments into code can elevate developers' skills, improve team security awareness, and foster a proactive security culture within the software development lifecycle. Check out the Find the Flaw exercise to test your skills. 🙌 Special Shout Outs Please join me in thanking this month's most helpful members in our Help & Support Forum. 1. netcat 2. jagira 3. autom8on 4. steven 5. ray96 If you'd like to see your name here one day, head on over to the forum and answer a question. 🔮 Looking Forward Did you hear about the Immersive Cyber Resilience Awards 2025? Read on to learn how you can qualify for nine different awards this October. We are also looking forward to the next Labs Live event on 15th May. In this webinar, MattParven, Principal Security Engineer & Cloud Security SME will talk you through one of our cloud computing labs as he tackles it live! Finally, we want to hear from you! Please give us your feedback on your community experience and let us know what else you'd like to see. See you in the community soon! KieranCommunity Newsletter - April 2025
Hello from Immersive HQ in Bristol UK where last week we hosted our first ever in-person community meetup. Ever since we launched this community last September we've been keen to find ways to make it more than just a collection of online forums and blogs about our products, and it would appear that you agree! Last Thursday 45 of you turned out for a standing-room only night of cybersecurity talks including the History of Encryption and the Future of Quantum Computing... it was great to put some faces to usernames! These sessions were not recorded, so you'll have to join us for our next meetup to see what it's all about. If you can't make it to Bristol, we are working on our plans to go further afield in the future. If you'd like to speak at a meetup or can offer accomodation please let us know. 🏆 The Human Connection Challenge Over 250 of you attempted this month's challenge, but only 10 completed it before the deadline! 🥇 First to Finish Once again steven completed the lab just a few hours after it's release! How does he do it? ⏱️ Fastest to Complete Steven was also the fastest to complete, with onkelstony coming in second in just under 3 hours. 🎯 Most Accurate Despite the difficulty, the following members all got 100% accuracy in their first attempt: BigChungus autom8on Markus IotS2024 Xat 💪 Most Persistent This month, the most persistent award goes to audeyisaacscba netcat barney MathewM Congratulations to all of our winners! If you haven't completed it yet you can find the walkthrough here. 📰 Community Updates This month we've been mostly concerned with last week's meetup, so there's not been too many changes around here, but hopefully you didn't mis BenMcCarthy and benhopkins fantastic SmokeLoader Blog Series: Reverse Engineering SmokeLoader: An In-Depth Analysis (Stage 1) Reverse Engineering SmokeLoader: An In-Depth Analysis (Stage 2) Reverse Engineering SmokeLoader: An In-Depth Analysis (Part 3) 🙌 Special Shout Outs This month we are introducing a new feature to the newsletter where we give thanks to the most helpful members in our Help & Support Forum. 1. steven 2. IotS2024 3. T3S0r0 4. pschmidt 5. Xat If you'd like to see your name here one day, head on over to the forum and answer a question. 🔮 Looking Forward The penultimate community challenge was launched earlier today and we have big plans for the season finale in May! Meanwhile, the project to integrate our Knowledge Base with the Community is in full swing and we anticipate that you will be able to use the search bar at the top of this page as a one stop shop for all of your Immersive needs in just a few weeks. I'm personally looking forward to the next Puppetmaster Crisis Sim on Thursday 3rd April and of course, the next meetup on 7th May at our Bristol HQ. Finally, we want to hear from you! Please give us your feedback on your community experience and let us know what else you'd like to see. See you in the community soon! KieranCommunity Newsletter - March 2025
Greetings from the UK where the evenings are finally getting lighter, the daffodils are desperately trying to bloom and the sun finally seems to be making a regular appearance. While spring may not have officially sprung yet, here at Immersive, change is in the air. Hopefully you have already noticed the launch of our new brand and the Immersive One platform. After many months of hard work across every team in every area of the business it really is a joy to announce this to the world and so I thought that I’d take this opportunity to share the promo video again (mostly because the soundtrack is an absolute banger!). 🏆 The Human Connection Challenge With the official launch of the new brand I’m also excited to FINALLY reveal the designs of our 2025 challenge coins which will soon be winging their way to the winners of Episode 4 of the Human Connection Challenge: 🥇 First to Finish You need to be quick to beat steven who regularly completes our challenge labs within hours of their release. ⏱️ Fastest to Complete New member Aleandro_Sy was the fastest community member to complete the lab in just 1 hour 45 minutes. 🎯 Most Accurate Despite this being the hardest challenge yet, 22 people got 100% accuracy, including the following community members: audeyisaacscba IotS2024 Xat Markus CrouchS barney Al13nz autom8on isaias00 noobr steven 💪 Most Persistent This month, the most persistent award goes to MathewM Congratulations to all of our winners! Did you know that every member who completes a challenge lab gets a digital version of this coin? But you’ll need to register to claim it! Challenge coins not your thing? Already got one? Don’t worry, we are working hard to make additional prizes and swag available in the not too distant future. 📰 Community Updates There have been a few other changes here in the Human Connection as well. You may have noticed that we’ve added a weekly leaderboard to the Help & Support Forum and we’ve also added some new content tags to make it easier to find and follow the content that you are looking for. Take a look at the new Feature Focus blog series or our recent blogs on Cyber Threat Intelligence. You can even find previous versions of this newsletter here. 🙌 Special Shout Outs Congratulations to netcat for being the first person to ascend to Silver member status and to steven for being the second! Between them they have a combined total of 95 Posts, 128 Likes and 13 Accepted Solutions! Some special swag will be on its way to you both as soon as it’s available! I also want to take a moment to celebrate our very own TillyCorless who, after months of dedication, effort and hard work, is now a certified project management professional. Congratulations Tilly! 🔮 Looking Forward Yesterday we kicked off a project to integrate our Knowledge Base with the Community. In a few short months you will be able to use the search bar at the top of this page as a one stop shop for all of your Immersive needs. I'm personally looking forward to the next webinar in our Operational CTI series. In this interactive session, BenMcCarthy and benhopkins will walk us through the steps that they took to reverse engineer SmokeLoader to create their recent lab on CVE-2025-0411 (7-ZIP MoTW Bypass). The event will be hosted live on Thursday March 6th, right here in the community and I’d love to see you there. And don’t worry, Spring is coming! KieranWe've Rebranded! Introducing Immersive
You might have noticed things looking a bit different around here—new logo, fresh fonts, updated colors, and a shift away from ‘Labs’... That’s right, we’ve rebranded! Welcome to Immersive! This rebrand reflects the evolution of our product offerings, which span crisis simulations, cyber ranges, workforce exercises, and of course our Immersive Labs (formerly Cyber Pro) which are still a core part of Immersive. As we transition, you’ll see updates across both the Immersive platform and within the community. This includes changes to the look and feel, as well as product name updates to better reflect our full suite of products. For instance, Team Sim will now be known as Cyber Range Exercises. Tags and navigation within the community will also be updated. In unveiling the new brand, CEO and Founder JamesHadley shared: “For some time, we’ve been working to build a platform that truly addresses the complex and evolving cybersecurity landscape. We recognized that cybersecurity readiness isn’t just about technical skills; it’s about fostering a culture of cyber excellence and resilience across the entire organization. It’s about empowering every employee, regardless of their role, to play a part in protecting the business - and proving it. That vision becomes a reality with Immersive One. This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s a fundamental shift in how we approach cybersecurity training and preparedness. Immersive One is a unified platform, designed to be relevant and impactful for every employee.” For more information, check out these articles: The Evolution of Immersive: Why We Rebranded Introducing our New Brand and Immersive One: A New Era of Cybersecurity Readiness Would you like to get your hands on the very first newly branded challenge coin? Be sure to complete The Human Connection Challenge: Season 1 - Linux to be in with a chance of winning one!Community Newsletter - February 2025
Welcome to February’s edition of the community newsletter! After what feels like a long month for many, February is finally here! Let's take a moment to look back at some of our favourite community highlights from January: 🏆 The Human Connection Challenge First of all, The moment that many of you have been waiting for: The results of Episode 3 of The Human Connection Challenge: Season 1. Here are the top performing community members in each category: 🥇 First to Finish jamesstammers was the first to finish the lab, in what can only be described as rapid speed! ⏱️ Fastest to Complete Xat was the fastest to finish, completing in a very respectable 48 minutes. 🎯 Most Accurate Shout outs to autom8on jamesstammers Xat and ifeanyiukadike, who each completed the lab 100% accuracy. 💪 Most Persistent They say that the most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time… audeyisaacscba & netcat did exactly that, securing the spots for the most persistent participants. Congratulation to winners and all who took part. Share how you got on in the comments below, and keep your eyes peeled for ✨ Lab 4 ✨ later today 👀 If you'd like to see how the lab author BethHolden intended for you to complete the lab, check out the official walkthrough here. 💡 Expert Insights We kicked off this year with a content theme of our highly anticipated new feature, Custom Lab Builder. You can read all you need to know about lab builder here: Feature Focus: Introducing Lab Builder Feature Focus: Introducing Drag and Drop, Free Text Questions, and Instructional Tasks in the Lab Builder A 3-part series from NaomiRoberts starting with From Concept to Content: A Deep Dive into Theorizing and Planning a Lab Collection From Feng Shui to Surveys: How User Feedback Shapes Immersive Labs And the beginning of a 3-part series from helenpayne & LauraBrady on Making the Most of Custom Lab Builder, deep-diving on topics including Accessibility, Inclusivity and Tone of Voice. And as usual, our expert CTI team have worked tirelessly to deliver the latest in CTI news, including new labs & Patch Tuesday January 2025. 🤝 Peer to Peer Support We built the Human Connection to help our members to connect and support each other, so it’s great to see many of you actively engaging to troubleshoot challenges and sharing solutions over in the Help and Support forum. So far, the forum is proving its worth with over 180 solutions to date. This month I wanted to particularly wanted to thank RobN who achieved Bronze III Rank by providing hints and tips to numerous other members. Thank you! In addition to forums, on Friday we introduced the community to the Human Connection Study Group! More news on the very first lab of Study Group coming later today. 📰 Product Updates If you are an Immersive Labs customer, come and read about all of the new features (including Lab Builder) and content in our January Release Notes. 🗓️ Exclusive Events If you missed it, catch KevBreen DaveSpencer & DanPotter in the recording of Be Ready in 2025: Hot Cybersecurity Takes and How to Build Resilience 🔮 Looking Forward We know how popular JP’s virtual Crisis Sims have been in this community, so you’ll be pleased to know that he’s back on valentines day with #LoveHacked Virtual Crisis Sim LIVE To look forward, we need to look back over your experiences of the community, so please do take the time to complete the survey this week. Last week we attended an Immersive off-site in Dublin, where we connected with colleagues across the business to plan lots of great initiatives, content and events to come in 2025, so watch this space! Of course, no trip to Dublin is complete without a visit to the Guiness Storehouse… It had to be done! Stay tuned by following the News & Announcements Tag and turn on your email Notifications 👀 See you in the community soon! TillyCommunity Newsletter - September 2024
Hello & Welcome Today, I am delighted to throw open the doors and welcome you all to the Human Connection Community. What you see here today is the result of many months of hard work incorporating feedback from many of our valued customers. I would particularly like to thank all of the members of of Early Access Program for their help and guidance as we’ve been preparing to launch. The Human Connection Community is your new customer hub. As a community member, you will get immediate access to the following benefits: Connect with thousands of other customers for help, support and collaboration Hints, tips and updates from Immersive Labs’ world-class subject matter experts Regular updates on the latest product releases, features, and company news Educational resources to drive success with your Immersive Labs solutions Exclusive digital and in-person events Of course, this is only the beginning, and we can’t wait to share some of the surprises that we have in store for the coming weeks and months, click the 🔔 at the top of this post ☝️ to make sure you stay informed. Human connection is vitally important to our individual wellbeing and the safety and security of society as a whole, and in the age of generative AI and increasingly complex cyber threats I look forward to connecting with you all, both virtually and IRL, as we strive to help the entire community to get the human edge. Ready to get started? Sign in using your Immersive Labs account and introduce yourself to the rest of the community. Need more information? Check out the following resources: Getting Started Guide Community Guidelines Community Best Practices I look forward to meeting you all very son, Kieran
