James Hadley, CEO and Founder, Immersive Labs

Additional Info

Job title of nominated professional (or team name)CEO
Company (where nominated professional or team is working)Immersive Labs
Websitehttps://www.immersivelabs.com/
Company size (employees)100 to 499
CountryUnited States
Headquarters RegionNorth America

Overview

James Hadley founded Immersive Labs in 2017 to help organizations build confidence in the cyber knowledge, skills and judgment of their entire workforce. The idea came from his time teaching GCHQ’s cyber school, where he noticed traditional training methods suited neither the people nor pace of cybersecurity. lmmersive Labs is the leader in people-centric cyber resilience. Immersive Labs helps organizations continuously assess, build, and prove their cyber workforce resilience for teams across the entire organization, from front-line cybersecurity and development teams to Board-level executives. They provide realistic simulations and hands-on cybersecurity labs to evaluate individual and team capabilities and decision-making against the latest threats. Organizations can now prove their cyber resilience by measuring their readiness compared to industry benchmarks, building team capabilities, and demonstrating risk reduction and compliance with data-backed evidence.

Accomplishments

James is disrupting traditional cyber training: James founded Immersive Labs to fundamentally transform the way cyber resilience training is delivered by offering realistic cyber drills that measure capabilities and help companies fill skills gaps before the next cyber attack. After he realized that classroom-based learning doesn’t work or keep pace, he set out to create dynamic, real-life cyber simulations and labs that allow learners - including those from non-traditional backgrounds - to enter the industry. He’s even brought this vision to life with Cyber Million, a White House-recognized program with Accenture that aims to solve the cybersecurity talent deficit by increasing access to one million entry-level jobs over the next decade.
James creates widely recognized programs and platforms: James’ vision for cyber resilience has led to recognition from highly esteemed organizations. The Cyber Million program was recently recognized by the White House within its larger National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy for Cyber Talent. As a result, James was invited to speak on an NSTAC panel at the White House in August. More recently, Immersive was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave™ report for Cybersecurity Skills and Training Platforms, Q4 2023.
James is a forward-looking leader, paving a new path towards cyber resilience. While the industry has primarily focused on outdated cyber training and certifications, James has found that these don’t translate to expertise and the dependence on them is making organizations more vulnerable. Instead, organizations should focus on realistic cyber exercises to benchmark the workforce’s cyber skills across all roles and provide vital knowledge, skills and judgment to stop threats. James’ novel approach is the foundation of Immersives’ innovative Cyber Workforce Resilience platform, which allows organizations to continually assess, build, and prove the capabilities of their cybersecurity teams so they can prevent and respond to the latest threats.


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