Immersive Labs, the cybersecurity skills platform company, announced Monday (January 14) that Goldman Sachs led an $8 million investment round in the company.
In a press release, Immersive Labs said the Series A investment round also included participation from smaller private investors. The funding will be used to expand the business, which provides information technology and cybersecurity teams with advanced skills by combining threat data with gamified learning. The funding will be used to add employees, expand infrastructure to develop the platform more, fund growth and develop its go-to-market strategy.
“Large organizations are facing a dual cyber security talent problem: not only is the number of professionals seriously lagging, but so is the pace at which their skills are developed. If you are able to recruit the right people in the first place, today’s attackers move so fast your team may quickly fall behind,” said James Hadley, CEO of Immersive Labs, in the press release. “Our goal is to reduce this gap. With increased capital, we can help more companies continue to upskill their cyber talent in a way which keeps pace with the threat landscape.”
According to the company, its Immersive Labs platform relies on real-time feeds of the latest attack techniques, hacker psychology and technological vulnerability to build cyber wargames for IT and security teams to play and learn from. Immersive Labs claims its platform can help people gain skills within hours of the threat emerging and can be used to identify and fix weaknesses in the talent pool that may be less immediate. Immersive Labs said some of its current clients include BAE Systems, Sophos and Grant Thorton.
“Having rolled out the Immersive Lab platform globally ourselves, we are aware of the benefits it brings to large organizations. Continuous training programs are critical to meeting evolving cyber security threats,” said Andy Ozment, Chief Information Security Officer at Goldman Sachs, in the same press release. “The Immersive platform has helped us hone the skills of the people at the front line of our cyber defenses and identify new talent throughout the organization.”