This guide includes the following sections:

• What are points?
• What are badges?
• What are achievements?
• What are streaks?

What are points?

When you complete exercises on our platform, you earn points. Points allocated to each lab are determined based on difficulty level and learning outcomes. 

For a breakdown of how many points are awarded per difficulty level see: exercise difficulty level and points.

You can see the total points you've earned on the platform on your profile, by navigating to your profile icon on the top right corner of the main navigation bar and selecting settings.

Points also enable you to compete with peers on the Cyber Million leaderboard.

Watch yourself progress on the leaderboard as your points increase every time you complete an exercise.

What are badges?

Badges are awarded whenever a collection of exercises is completed.  

Most collections require you to complete all the exercises to earn a badge.  For these, you'll receive points for each lab and a badge for finishing the entire collection. There are some collections that only require you to complete a 'Demonstrate' lab to finish the collection.  In this case, you will receive the badge for the collection, but only the points for the 'Demonstrate' exercise completed.

To apply for a job, you do need to complete all exercises within the Defensive Security Operations collection, not just the 'Demonstrate' labs. 

You can now share your Badges with your network!  Details of how this can be done can be found in the Achievements section below.

What are achievements?

Achievements is the area on our platform that lists the badges you have earned.   

You can access your Achievements page by:

• Navigating to your profile icon, round on the far right in the main navigation menu and selecting achievements in the dropdown.

Selecting to view a particular achievement will show you details such as difficulty level, average time spent and points achieved. 

You'll also be able to share this achievement with your network on social media by selecting the relevant icon under share this achievement with your network:

You can also share achievements on your socials as soon as a badge is unlocked, whilst you are completing the lab itself:

Badges can be shared on LinkedIn and Twitter, or on other platforms or CVs/resumes by using the URL feature.

What are streaks?

Streaks encourage you to specify and complete a number of exercises every week. You can adjust your goal by selecting streak settings in the streaks area of the Launchpad, or by heading to your profile and clicking the streaks tab (where you can also disable the feature).