Following its announcement of $10.6 million in Series A funding earlier this week, U.K.-based Hack The Box has ambitious plans for the future – and opening a new office in the United States tops the list.
Hack The Box claims to have the world’s largest ethical hacker community with more than 500,000 platform members with diverse IT backgrounds, encompassing 800 business and government organizations and 550 academic institutions. Players learn by “attacking” vulnerabilities in virtual labs, advancing their adversarial skills in a simulated, gamified test environment.
Today, Hack The Box has 90 employees across the globe and the U.S. team makes up 10% of the global workforce – a number the company intends to double in the U.S. by end-of-year. While the location for the U.S. office has not been confirmed, the company aims for the office to create a strong base for its U.S. business operations.
“The plans for growth in the U.S., driven by additional staff and a new office, will help Hack The Box better serve each existing client and attract new business,” said Aris Zikopoulos, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Hack The Box. “More than 40% of our enterprise clients are based in the U.S., including Fortune 500 companies and leading academic institutions.
James Hooker, co-founder and chief technology officer of Hack The Box, said the company also plans to use the Series A funding to grow the research and development function of the business by four times over the next 18 months. He said up until November 2020, Hack The Box was offering more generalized cybersecurity training labs that help community members arm themselves with the skills needed to fend off a future cyber-attack.
Late last year, Hooker said Hack The Box launched the HTB Academy, which works as a “University for Hackers” that offers a more curated experience for those looking to upskill their cybersecurity expertise, based on theoretical knowledge and applied through a guided learning training approach.
HTB Academy offers three courses: offensive, defensive, and general cybersecurity. The academy offers these programs to students as a resource for hands-on exercises that serve as checkpoints, as well as skills assessments to test their understanding and progress with the platform. This individual form of interactive online course training suits entry-level members as well as experts, ensuring that the learning platform remains viable resource for anyone in cybersecurity.
“Innovation runs in the team’s DNA,” Hooker said. “Our investment in the R&D function will help us continue to define the market by introducing groundbreaking features across every single product.”
Hooker said Hack The Box will also unveil a variety of new products and updates to the platform to benefit the learning development for members. The company will share further details in the coming months, but members can expect an enterprise platform redesign with added-value features for Hack The Box business customers. Also planned are more learning modules on HTB Academy and more hacking labs on the main HTB platform.
