Immersive Launches AppSec Range Exercises, Revolutionizing Developer-Led Security Training

Imagine waking up to an unwelcome surprise: Overnight, attackers found and exploited a vulnerability in your flagship app. Unfortunately, this scenario is far from fiction. 

According to last year’s Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, breaches due to application vulnerability exploitation tripled in frequency over the past year, reflecting both heightened attacker interest and lagging patch‑management processes. Meanwhile, they found the human element is responsible for 68% of breaches, underscoring that even the most sophisticated defenses can be undone by simple oversights. For Engineering and AppSec leaders, this scenario is a living nightmare. Traditional AppSec training methods struggle to ignite developer interest in honing security skills, leaving teams ill-equipped to defend against threats and organizations vulnerable. A new approach is needed—one that truly empowers developers to take ownership of security. 

Launched today, our revolutionary Immersive AppSec Range Exercises answers the call, expanding Immersive AppSec to deliver the world’s first unified application security training solution. During a range exercise designed for engineering, AppSec, and DevSecOps teams, participants collaborate to identify, triage, and fix application vulnerabilities in real-time, amidst the chaos on the front lines of your cyber defenses. 

Here’s a closer look at what makes this solution unique for developers, engineers, and security teams, plus the game-changing benefits it offers AppSec leaders today.

Driving Business Outcomes with Immersive AppSec Range Exercises

“Our new product offers the world’s first live, practical, and repeatable AppSec exercising experience that mirrors how engineering teams identify and fix vulnerabilities together,” explains Chris Wood, Principal AppSec SME at Immersive. “We’re giving VPs of Engineering and Heads of AppSec a way to turn security into a strategic enabler—reducing friction, proving competence, and embedding secure habits at scale.”

In addition, detailed insights on completion rates, fix accuracy, and common failure points equip AppSec leaders to pinpoint where their teams excel and where extra coaching is needed. Because every exercise lives in an enterprise’s tooling ecosystem—ticket boards, Git repositories, integration tests—the approach feels less like training and more like “business as usual” for developers.

AppSec Range Exercises: From Theory to Crisis-Prevention

To deliver measurable impact for enterprises, AppSec Range Exercises deliver what no other application security training solution does: a live simulation in which developers, engineers, and security teams compete to triage tickets, write patches, run tests, and merge code under pressure.

How AppSec Range Exercises Work: A Practical Overview

During the just-released simulation exercise, teams log into “Blossom,” an HR app by Orchid Corp. (a fictional company), where users have flagged a string of vulnerabilities. A ticket board lists every issue. Engineers jump in—assigning, pairing, and sprinting to resolve each flaw. A single click in the verification console spins up automated tests on the live server, returning ticks and crosses in seconds. If a test fails, they must look under the hood, adjust their code, and push again. All in real time.

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“The interactivity is awesome,” says Katie Carr‑Ferguson, Data Engineer. “You divvy up tickets, pair‑program, review PRs—it’s exactly what we do day-to-day.”

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AppSec Range Exercises cover the full software development lifecycle—complete with Git workflows, ticket triage, live environments, and a personal workstation pre‑loaded with common dev tools. By the end of the simulation, every engineer has lived through the crisis, collaborated to tackle issues, and practiced to deliver the cure.

Turning Security Skeptics into Champions with Immersive AppSec

Engineering and AppSec leaders know they must prove and improve their team’s security skills. But doing so is another matter. A staggering 67% of developers knowingly release vulnerable code, despite the long-standing industry push to “shift left”. So what’s holding them back? Traditional approaches to application security training can’t crack the developer-mindset code. Immersive trailblazes a new path forward with a unique approach.

AppSec Range Exercises: Built by Developers, for Developers

Chris Wood understands the common ‘developer versus security’ challenge first-hand. Then, as a young software developer, participating in an eye-opening capture-the-flag exercise changed his perspective entirely. From that moment forward, he was hooked on security. 

He saw the personal, professional, and company benefits of embedding security best practices into his regular workday. He could ship code faster, which meant getting time back in his day to focus on more complex projects. Given newfound shared goals, Wood also built rapport with security-focused colleagues, which made cross-team alignment smoother. Meanwhile, he accessed new professional opportunities as a ‘rising star’ within the wider organization. 

“I thought, if I could build a similar, capture-the-flag-like experience for developers, that would be it—the moment that would change everything for software developers like me who love to compete, love to build … and don’t want to get slowed down.” 

Wood envisioned AppSec Range Exercises that would tip the balance, finally lowering the barrier for developers to internalize the value of secure code development and to work across teams organically.

Unprecedented Cross-Team Engagement and Collaboration

When Wood piloted Immersive AppSec Range Exercises this spring, feedback poured in about how the simulation shifted mindsets—instead of viewing security as a hurdle, developers embraced it as a driver of code quality, release velocity, predictability, and organizational resilience. 

Barnaby Stewart, Lead AppSec Engineer, found the experience “engaging, realistic, and a lot of fun! The competitive aspect makes you feel invested.” Lowering the high bar of achieving a security-first culture becomes a reality when senior front-end developers like Joe Berkem report their experience proved a “brilliant exercise—feels like working on a product, not a lab, and really fosters teamwork”. 

Similarly, senior back-end developers like Ashik Ajith leave the experience feeling the time invested is worthwhile, providing “an exceptional team‑building event. We experienced real‑world maintenance and effective bug‑fix strategies.” 

Even first‑timers can dive in. Matthew Storey, Senior Software Engineer, shared, “it was my first cyber exercise and I was engrossed all day, solving problems together.” It’s experiences like these that Engineering and AppSec leaders strive for and can now achieve: Teams understand how security can be embedded into daily work, reducing friction that enables DevSecOps teams to deliver secure code at speed. 

Immersive AppSec: A Market-First Approach to Application Security Training

Equipping development teams to take ownership of security no longer needs to be elusive. Immersive AppSec equips enterprise leaders with a unified approach to application security training, so they can continuously prove and improve their cybersecurity posture. 

Hands-on labs offer practical coding challenges that expose genuine vulnerabilities, while range exercises simulate real-world remediation scenarios, fostering collaboration under pressure. Using these solutions together, AppSec leaders can achieve unprecedented outcomes—from accelerating secure code delivery and maximizing training ROI to unifying DevSecOps teams under a resilient, standards-compliant security culture.

Partnering with Immersive means driving developer productivity, development predictability, and cyber resilience. Better still, lowering risk becomes ‘muscle memory’ for developers and engineers, making security outcomes achievable at scale.

Final Thought: Security as a Developer Priority

Since security can’t be an afterthought in today’s fast‑paced development world, there’s only one alternative—it must be the first thought. That’s why Immersive AppSec expanded its dynamic hands-on labs solution by pioneering AppSec Range Exercises, delivering the world’s only unified approach to developer-led security training. By bridging the gap between theory and practice and empowering developers to own security, this groundbreaking approach equips AppSec leaders to transform security from a blocker into a competitive advantage. 

If you’re ready to empower your developers and transform your AppSec strategy, explore Immersive AppSec hands-on labs and range exercises and see how they can drive real-world results for your organization:

• Learn more about our unified approach to application security training.
• Book time to discuss how Immersive AppSec can support your unique goals.

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