Introduction
Capture The Flag (CTF) platforms have become a cornerstone of cybersecurity training, assessments and talent development. However, not all CTF hosting platforms are built with the same philosophy or long-term goals in mind.
Simulations Labs was designed to go beyond traditional CTFs. Instead of focusing only on short-lived competitions, it enables organizations, educators, and security teams to create realistic, reusable, and scalable hands-on cybersecurity simulations.
Below are the key aspects that set Simulations Labs apart from other CTF hosting platforms.
Fully Managed Hosting Without Infrastructure Overhead
One of the biggest challenges with running CTFs and hands-on labs is infrastructure. Servers, cloud resources, networking, scaling, monitoring, and teardown often require significant time, cost, and engineering effort.
Simulations Labs removes this burden entirely.
The platform provides fully managed hosting for:
- CTF competitions
- Hands-on labs and challenges
- On-demand and scenario-based simulations
All infrastructure is handled by the platform at no additional cost. There is no need to provision servers, manage cloud accounts, or worry about scaling during peak usage. Lab environments are automatically created, isolated, and managed for participants.
This allows organizers, instructors, and security teams to focus on what actually matters: designing meaningful challenges and delivering high-quality learning experiences, not managing infrastructure. It also strengthens employer branding by showcasing a well-run, professional CTF environment.
How this compares to other platforms:
For example, platforms like CTFd offer managed hosting only as part of paid or higher-tier plans. In many cases, organizations either need to self-host CTFd or pay extra for infrastructure and scaling.
With Simulations Labs, managed hosting is built into the platform by default. Whether you are running a small internal exercise or a large-scale competition, the infrastructure for CTFs, labs, and challenges is handled for you, without additional hosting fees.
Hosting Web Application Challenges With True Instance Isolation
Simulations Labs makes hosting web application challenges simple, fully managed, and autoscalable. The process is easy: challenge creators just upload their Docker container file, and the platform handles everything.
Key features include:
- Hosting the Docker container on Simulations Labs servers, reducing server costs and overhead
- Automatically scaling containers to handle large numbers of participants, ensuring smooth performance
- Provisioning a separate isolated environment for every participant, providing a safe and realistic experience
How this compares to other platforms:
Platforms like CTFd allow deploying Docker-based challenges, but often require shared instances or manual configuration to isolate users and scale for many participants. Simulations Labs provides this automatically, making web application challenges easier, safer, and more realistic to run.
No Worries About Attacks or Server Downtime
With cloud-hosted Simulations Labs, organizers do not need to worry about servers being attacked, crashing, or going offline. The platform handles all security and uptime concerns automatically.
How this compares to other platforms:
Self-hosted platforms like CTFd leave security, monitoring, and server availability entirely to the organizer, which can be complex and risky, especially during large events or competitions.
Custom CTF Challenge Creation with Dashboard
Simulations Labs provides organizers with a comprehensive dashboard that allows them to create and manage custom CTF challenges. Organizers can upload Docker containers, define challenge configurations, and control participant access easily. Every challenge is automatically provisioned with isolated environments and scalable resources, ensuring smooth operation even for large groups.
How this compares to other platforms:
Platforms like Hack The Box do not provide a dashboard for organizers to create custom challenges. Organizers can only select from prebuilt templates, limiting flexibility for running internal CTFs or custom competitions. Simulations Labs gives full control to organizers, making it possible to design tailored, realistic, and scalable CTF experiences.
Dynamic Flag Feature Preventing Cheating
Simulations Labs generates a unique flag per participant or per team at the moment their environment is created. Each flag is tied to the user ID and the environment instance, which means no two players ever receive the same flag. Even if someone tries to share their flag, it will not work elsewhere, as the platform automatically rejects it as invalid.
How this compares to other platforms:
Platforms like CTFd offer similar functionality through Application Target challenges, but the setup is more complex and requires custom configuration (CTFd docs). Simulations Labs makes dynamic flags automatic and seamless, ensuring fair play with minimal organizer effort.
AI Powered Challenge Creation
Simulations Labs provides AI powered challenge creation that allows organizers to generate complete CTF challenges, not just ideas or outlines. Organizers describe the challenge scenario, select the domain and difficulty, and the platform generates a fully structured challenge ready to be used in a CTF or assessment.
The simulation is fully configured and ready to be used directly in a CTF or assessment. The AI generated challenge highlights the prerequisites, tools, and skills explored in the scenario, making it easy for organizers to create challenges that are aligned with their specific learning or assessment goals.
This capability also makes the platform accessible to non-technical users. Even organizations without dedicated content creators or experienced CTF authors can design and run professional quality challenges, lowering the barrier to entry for hosting CTFs and assessments.
Reusable Challenges and Scenarios
Challenges, labs, and simulations in Simulations Labs can be reused for multiple CTF events, assessments or training programs. Organizers do not need to recreate environments for recurring competitions, which saves time and reduces setup effort.
How this compares to other platforms:
Other platforms, such as self-hosted CTFd instances, often require manual re-creation of challenges for each new event. Simulations Labs allows organizers to deploy reusable content easily, making it ideal for recurring internal CTFs, corporate cyber drills, or ongoing skill development programs.
Unlimited Challenge Hosting Without Additional Cost
Organizers can host an unlimited number of CTF challenges without additional fees, making it easy to scale competitions, assessments, or internal training programs while enhancing employer branding.
How this compares to other platforms:
Platforms like CTFd or Hack The Box may limit the number of challenges or require self-hosted infrastructure for additional content. Simulations Labs removes these limitations, enabling truly unlimited challenge hosting.
Conclusion
Simulations Labs stands out from other CTF hosting platforms by offering a fully managed, scalable, and secure environment for cybersecurity competitions and assessments. With features like dynamic flags, reusable challenges, true instance isolation, ai-powered challenge creation, and a user-friendly dashboard, organizers can focus on delivering high-quality learning experiences. Beyond just competitions, Simulations Labs enhances employer branding and supports continuous skill development, making it the ideal Capture The Flag platform for organizations, educators, and security teams seeking a professional, plug-and-play solution.
