VHL Roadmap 2025

VHL was founded as a bootstrapped company in May 2017 and was at that time one of the few providers of online penetration testing labs and training. In 2024, the market has changed in many ways and the providers of penetration testing training and labs are numerous. VHL’s focus has always been on developing realistic lab scenarios with minimal CTF elements to imitate the real world as much as possible. The realistic lab machines and the network labs have always been one of VHL’s strengths over the years. Additionally, VHL’s attractive price has also been a reason for the popularity of the PT01 and PT02 course.

VHL’s educational philosophy assumes that students learn through a combination of theory and practice, whereby students learn to solve problems mainly through their own research with little guidance. This helps students to gain a better understanding of the problem and the solution strengthen problem analysis and problem solving skills. This educational philosophy is supported by the course manual that covers the required techniques, the hints for some of the lab machines that help the student in the right direction and the lack of detailed write-ups pushing students to simply follow a list of steps. To strengthen our educational philosophy and innovate for the future, we will implement several changes for all VHL courses in 2024 and 2025 in the form of several innovations.

Innovations

The planned updates relate to the existing courses, new courses, the lab platform and the LMS. The following sections explain our plans for 2025 for each component of the platform.

Lab platform

The VHL lab platform will be transferred to a new platform that will be hosted with a cloud service provider. The current lab platform will be phased out in Q1/2024. In January/February 2025 the new lab platform will be set up and launched. From the launch of the new platform, all memberships will be up for sale again in the shop, including the longer-term memberships. Please note that there may be a short bridging period at the beginning of 2025 during which the PT01 course is not available.

Here are some important dates:

  • January/February 2025: Launch of new platform with the PT01 course.
  • February/March 2025: Launching the PT02 course on the new platform.

We will do our best to launch the new platform as early as possible in 2025.

Learning Management System (LMS)

The PT01 and PT02 course is currently offered via a custom LMS on the VHL website and a downloadable PDF. Together with the new lab platform, we will make the switch to an external LMS platform. The external LMS offers more options for facilitating more diverse educational activities, such as quizzes, feedback assignments and exams. The PT01 Penetration Testing course and the PT02 Pro Lab course are revised based on the new LMS features. This means that the current LMS platform will be phased out as of Q1, 2025. The new LMS platform will be available in January/February 2025 together with the new lab platform. We will do our best to launch the new platform as early as possible in 2025.

New pentesting course

Finally, the last several months we have worked very hard on a completely new penetration testing course that will be added to the current course portfolio. The launch of the beta version of the course is scheduled for late Q4 of 2024 for a small group of invitees and Q1 2025 for the public. This new course will be fully launched on the new LMS platform.

More information about this course will be available on the website in early Q4 of 2024, including an option for early bird entry into the course.

FAQ and other questions

All planned changes are an improvement of the VHL platform and the courses. However, we understand that these changes raise some questions. We will answer the most frequently asked questions here.

Why is there a bridging period during which the VHL courses are not available?

The transition to a new lab platform and an external LMS takes a lot of time and effort to set up. A so-called running change in which everything is set up redundantly makes this process a lot more complex and puts a major strain on the available capacity and resources. For this reason, not all products are currently available. The PT02 course and longer membership will be available again when the new platform is ready.

Will the price and composition of the VHL courses remain the same?

We try to use the current price level, but a (small) price change is not excluded.

Is it wise to start the VHL course in Q3/Q4 of 2024?

In general it is not a problem to start the course on the current platform. You account is transferred to the new platform when it’s launched. The PT02 Pro Lab course is not available until the new platform is ready.