The Marshall Center celebrated the graduation of 84 security professionals from 37 countries who completed the Hybrid Threats and Cybersecurity resident course on July 31, 2026, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Over four weeks, participants strengthened the knowledge, skills, and professional networks needed to better understand, prepare for, and respond to today's increasingly complex hybrid and cyber threats. Through seminars, strategy development, and practical exercises alongside experts from government, academia, industry, and the military, the course emphasized the partnerships required to turn strategy into effective action.

"One lesson stands out: Success depends on cooperation, trust, and strong partnerships," Marshall Center Director Barre Seguin told graduates during the ceremony.

Throughout the course, participants examined hybrid threats through modules on strategy, cybersecurity, hybrid campaigns, and resilience before applying those concepts in a culminating tabletop exercise. More than 20 Marshall Center faculty members and a diverse lineup of guest speakers contributed to the program, ensuring participants benefited from operational, policy, and private-sector perspectives.

Industry experts, in particular, helped participants better understand the realities of defending and operating the critical infrastructure, technologies, and digital services on which national security increasingly depends.

"The world is unfortunately asymmetric. We as defenders, we need to protect everything, but the attackers and our adversaries, they only need one ingress point to be successful," said Mike Hart, a private-industry head of cloud security who brought real-world expertise from the front lines of digital security.

The course also featured the AI Meets Security (AIMS) Retreat, bringing together researchers, graduate students, and security professionals to examine the growing role of artificial intelligence in security and defense, alongside contributions from the Hybrid Centre of Excellence, the Irregular Warfare Center, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, and BWI.

As the graduates join the Marshall Center's global alumni network of more than 17,000 professionals from over 165 countries, they leave not only with new knowledge, but with trusted relationships that strengthen international security cooperation long after the course concludes.

"Our nations face a variety of challenges: disinformation campaigns that come as part of strategic competition among states, attacks on critical infrastructure within new conflicts that are below the threshold of war, rapidly evolving technologies, and AI platforms that offer unbelievable new possibilities," said Ben Nickels, Marshall Center professor and course director during opening remarks July 6. "Our goal is to empower all of you to contribute to collective efforts to confront cyber and hybrid threats, to be able to be those defense and security professionals who can set visions, set strategies, and make decisions."

Congratulations to the HTC Class of 2026, the faculty and staff who delivered the course, and the many partners whose expertise helped prepare another cohort of security practitioners to meet evolving security challenges.