Commissioned by Immersive
Published November 2025
Executive summary
While 71% of organizations feel their readiness programs are mature, our new report reveals a troubling disconnect: key performance metrics have flatlined year-over-year. This is the “Readiness Rut,” a dangerous gap between perceived readiness and actual capability.
Combining industry-wide survey data with performance metrics from millions of real-world cyber exercises, the 2025 Cyber Workforce Benchmark Report is the definitive look at the state of cyber resilience today. It provides the data-driven diagnosis you need to identify hidden risks, benchmark your teams, and build a truly resilient workforce.
Immersive’s report draws from:
- An Immersive commissioned survey with Osterman Research of 500 cybersecurity leaders and practitioners in the U.S. and U.K. (August–September 2025), capturing how organizations perceive and measure readiness.
- Anonymized performance data within the Immersive One platform (July 2024–June 2025), representing millions of hands-on labs across industries.
- Results from Immersive’s “Orchid Corp” crisis simulation, involving 187 professionals across 11 drills in 9 cities, measuring real-world decision-making and containment under pressure.
- Analysis of the Immersive Resilience Score, a benchmark that quantifies readiness across people, process, and technology by measuring decision accuracy, response time, framework alignment, and adaptability to new threats. The score applies to all Immersive users, subject to eligibility, as customers must have the relevant product to be evaluated on each corresponding factor.