About Practical Academy

Practical Academy is a cloud-based learning platform built to give every student on-the-job training before they’re on the job—so they can crush interviews and hit the ground running once hired.

We started in cybersecurity, and we’re expanding into computer science and other technical fields where real lab work matters: operating systems, networking, cloud, secure coding, data, and more.

Every learner gets their own private EC2-based lab environment, accessed right from the browser. They don’t just watch someone else do it—they do the work themselves.

Our Mission

Our mission is to close the gap between classroom learning and day-one job performance.

We want students to:

  1. Practice in environments that look and feel like real production systems.
  2. Gain experience doing the exact tasks they’ll be asked about in interviews.
  3. Walk into a new role already comfortable with the tools and workflows they’ll use on the job.

If it doesn’t help you get hired or perform better once you’re hired, it doesn’t belong in our courses.

How the Platform Works

Instructor-Built Labs on EC2

Instructors build their course on a live EC2 instance—installing tools, configuring services, and setting up projects just like they would in a real environment.

When the course is ready:

  1. We clone that instance for each student, giving everyone their own isolated system.
  2. Students log in through the browser and work in a sandboxed lab that’s theirs alone.
  3. Time limits and isolation keep things secure and cost-effective.

This model mirrors how modern teams work with cloud dev/test environments, so students are practicing in a way that naturally transfers to the job.

Ready-Made, CAE-Mapped Courses

For cybersecurity programs and instructors who don’t want to build everything from scratch, we offer pre-made courses mapped to CAE Knowledge Units (KUs).

  1. Schools can adopt these courses to support CAE accreditation.
  2. Instructors can use them “as is” or customize them on top of our lab environments.
  3. Students get structured, hands-on experience aligned with nationally recognized standards.

Bring Your Own Course + Revenue Sharing

For instructors and experts:

  1. Create your own course on our platform, using our EC2-based labs.
  2. We clone your environment for each student, handle access, tracking, and billing.
  3. You earn a percentage of the revenue when students enroll in your course.

As we expand beyond cybersecurity into broader computer science and related fields, this becomes a way for subject-matter experts to turn their course ideas into scalable, lab-based offerings.

What Students Actually Do

Today, many of our courses focus on cybersecurity, where students:

  1. Harden servers with STIGs and best practices.
  2. Run vulnerability scans (e.g., OpenVAS) and interpret the results.
  3. Fix misconfigurations, rerun scans, and document remediation.
  4. Submit screenshots, logs, and reports just like they would in a real role.

By the time they’re applying for jobs, they’re not just saying, “I know what a vulnerability scan is”—they can say, “I’ve run them, prioritized findings, and fixed them.”

That’s the difference that wins interviews.

Built by an Educator & Practitioner

Our founder of Practical Academy is both a cybersecurity professor and a working security practitioner. He’s watched countless students graduate with strong theory but not enough hands-on confidence.

Practical Academy is his answer:

Give students real systems, real tools, and real tasks, so when they land interviews and first jobs, everything feels familiar—not new. You will go from knowing the theory of how something works, to knowing how to apply it, because you already did it!

Our Vision

We’re building a platform where:

  1. Every student gets on-the-job style practice before they land the job.
  2. Every instructor can turn their expertise into a lab-based course without building their own infrastructure.
  3. Every school can choose between:
  4. Using our CAE-mapped cybersecurity courses, or
  5. Building their own courses on top of our EC2-based lab engine.

Practical Academy is where students train like they’re already hired—so when they actually are, they’re ready to go from day one.

About Us | Practical Academy