Report warns overconfidence masks flat cyber preparedness

Infosecurity Magazine reports that organizational confidence in handling cyber incidents remains high even as measurable readiness fails to improve.

Despite 91% of leaders claiming they could manage a major breach, the report noted that resilience scores derived from Immersive One training data have not advanced since 2023, findings from Immersive's Cyber Workforce Benchmark Report 2025 showed. Median completion time for essential hands-on labs is still 17 days, and in the company's "Orchid Corp" crisis exercise, teams averaged only 22% decision accuracy and needed 29 hours to contain the simulated attack. Immersive links stalled progress in part to narrow training scopes.

Only 41% of organizations involve nontechnical roles in simulations, leaving critical business decisions untested until an actual emergency. The study also found that 60% of training focuses on vulnerabilities more than two years old, creating gaps in preparedness for current threats.

To close these gaps, the report urges organizations to run diverse and recurring simulations, ensure exercises are completed rather than attempted, engage senior leaders directly, expand participation beyond IT, prioritize current CVEs, and build programs around "prove, improve, report."