Introducing E-Learning

At Pentest People, we’ve always said that technology alone cannot secure an organisation. Firewalls, patching programmes, penetration testing and vulnerability management are all crucial but the reality is that your people remain both your organisation’s greatest asset and one of its most exposed security controls. In fact, while organisations continue to mature their technical controls, awareness training is often where programmes fall behind. It’s usually scattered across multiple platforms, delivered inconsistently, or lacks the relevance to genuinely influence behaviour.

This is why today marks an important milestone for our customers and for the evolution of GuardNest. We are delighted to announce E-Learning, our new accredited security and compliance e-learning module built directly into GuardNest bringing people development, continuous learning and risk reduction together in one centralised, familiar and trusted platform.

GuardNest is already famous for helping organisations discover, measure and manage technical vulnerability. It powers trusted penetration testing workflows, continuous vulnerability scanning and remediation tracking for organisations across the UK and beyond. With E-Learning, we are extending this capability transforming GuardNest from a platform that help identify technologic risk into one that also helps identify and mitigate the human risks.

Below is a quick overview of how E-Learning will function within GuardNest:

Why E-Learning Matters

For years we have heard a consistent set of challenges from customers. Many organisations are juggling several training portals, each holding a different subset of content, managed by different departments and providers. Staff forget where to log in, HR teams find themselves chasing completion across multiple systems, and security leaders struggle to connect training programmes with real-world risks emerging from penetration tests or technical findings.

At the same time, regulatory expectations continue to rise. Cyber insurers demand demonstrable evidence of annual training. Customers increasingly request proof of awareness programmes during due diligence. Compliance frameworks from ISO 27001 to GDPR expect structured, ongoing training and clearly recorded completion.

Yet, despite all of this, security behaviour training remains fragmented.

E-Learning changes that. By bringing accredited e-learning directly into GuardNest, we are giving organisations a single, unified training platform aligned to the very place where cyber risk is already being tracked, assessed and prioritised. Instead of sending teams to multiple external portals, you can now manage both technical controls and human controls from one ecosystem.

A Continuously Growing, Accredited E-Learning Library

E-Learning launches with more than 27 accredited security, data protection and GDPR courses, each designed to be short, practical and directly applicable to everyday working scenarios. These courses are produced, reviewed and regularly updated by subject-matter experts, ensuring they remain aligned to evolving threats and best practice.

Unlike traditional learning management systems that require external hosting or complex integration, E-Learning is fully embedded within GuardNest. There are no additional logins, no separate systems, no disconnected reporting pathways and no hidden administrative overheads. Everything from course browsing to progress tracking happens right inside the platform your teams already use for penetration testing and vulnerability management.

This integration sets a new standard for how organisations can scale security awareness. Whether you want to launch a full, organisation-wide security programme or simply deploy targeted refresher courses to specific teams, E-Learning provides the flexibility to do so with ease.

Role Based Access Control - Purpose-Built for People Teams

To ensure smooth onboarding and delegated management, we’ve introduced two new user roles that align naturally to how organisations operate:

Learner

This role gives users access exclusively to the e-learning component of GuardNest, offering a clean, uncluttered interface focused purely on their assigned courses. It is ideal for general staff who do not require visibility of penetration testing results or other technical areas of the platform.

Learner Admin

Designed for HR teams, people managers or training administrators, this role empowers organisations to run their own training programmes with minimal involvement from technical teams. Learner Admins can:

• Add and onboard learners directly into GuardNest

• Create and manage groups to mirror organisational structure

• Assign courses to individuals or whole departments

• Apply due dates, expiry dates and annual refresher cycles

• Monitor, export and evidence completion against compliance needs
  

This ensures HR and compliance professionals have the autonomy and capability to manage training at scale without needing elevated privileges or support from IT or security teams.

Flexible Assignments and Group-Based Training

E-Learning has been engineered to support organisations of all sizes, from small teams requiring a handful of training seats to large, multi-department enterprises running structured programmes.

Within GuardNest, administrators can build groups that reflect real business units such as “Developers – UK”, “Finance – Leeds”, “Customer Support – EMEA” or “New Starters”. These groups act as powerful assignment containers, allowing you to:

• Roll out courses to hundreds of users in seconds

• Tailor training paths to the specific needs of each team

• Apply consistent rules for due dates, expiries and annual refreshers

• Keep training aligned as teams change, expand or reorganise

The system automatically handles the operational details: generating training assignments for individuals, enrolling new joiners the moment they are added to a group, and maintaining complete historical records even when content updates or roles shift.

This level of automation removes hours of manual admin and ensures that no user, no matter where they sit in the organisation, falls through the cracks.

Designed for Real-World Risk Reduction

Perhaps the most important aspect of E-Learning is its connection to the broader GuardNest platform. Because this is not a third-party plugin or an external LMS, we have the opportunity to create meaningful links between training and technical findings.

Already, organisations can look at penetration testing results, identify recurring issues such as insecure coding practices or password hygiene failures and assign relevant courses to individuals or teams directly from the same ecosystem. This creates a natural, intuitive feedback loop between identified risk and targeted training.

Over time, this will evolve even further. We are working on processes to automatically recommend training based on patterns in vulnerability data, ensuring that human behaviour evolves in tandem with the organisation’s technical maturity.

Security and Compliance Built the GuardNest Way

Because E-Learning lives within GuardNest, it inherits the same rigorous security architecture that underpins our testing and scanning modules.

Single Sign-On

Users authenticate through GuardNest’s existing identity and access framework. There are no extra passwords, no additional identity stores and no risk of credentials being lost or shared.

Access Control and Content Protection

Only assigned users can access training content. This prevents link-sharing, unauthorised access or accidental disclosure of licensed e-learning materials.

Encrypted, Origin-Aware Communication

All content is launched through modern, browser-secure communication channels that ensure training traffic remains protected and isolated. Cross-domain interactions are strictly limited to trusted locations.

This gives customers all the convenience of a shared training platform without the compromises often associated with third-party learning portals.

Flexible Pricing for All Customers

E-Learning is included at no additional cost for customers on our full GuardNest plans:

• Core customers receive 10 included e-learning seats

• Advanced customers receive 50 included seats
  

For organisations using GuardNest purely for a one-off penetration test, the e-learning module is also available as a standalone add-on, offering accredited training at a significantly more affordable rate than typical third-party vendors. This makes it accessible to organisations of all sizes and maturity levels, even those not yet ready to commit to a full GuardNest package.

Where We’re Taking This Next

Launching E-Learning is just the beginning. We have a dedicated roadmap aimed at deepening the relationship between human learning, technical risk and organisational resilience.

Upcoming enhancements include:

• Smarter, automated renewal flows for recurring training

• Pattern-based recommendations tied to GuardNest vulnerability data

• Team-level dashboards showing how training influences risk scores over time

• Expanded course libraries covering more niche, role-specific topics

• Enhanced APIs for automated user provisioning and HRIS synchronisation
  

Our ambition is simple:

To make GuardNest the central place where organisations not only understand their cyber risk but actively reduce it through continuous, embedded learning.