Hack The Box

What Hack The Box is

Hack The Box is a hands-on cybersecurity training platform with two sides: an individual product where people learn and practice offensive and defensive security, and an enterprise platform that security leaders use to train, assess and hire their teams. The home page calls it "The #1 platform to build attack-ready teams and organizations" and counts 4.3m+ learners, plus 200k+ hackers in its Discord community. The same page reports that Hack The Box was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave for Cybersecurity Skills and Training Platforms, and it shows ratings of 4.8 from G2 users, 4.9 from Capterra users and 4.8 from Trustpilot users. The current headline is "Build and scale a cyber workforce in the AI era", aimed at teams preparing for what the site calls "an AI-accelerated landscape". The company's stated mission is "to create a safer cyber world by making cybersecurity training fun and accessible to everyone."

For individual learners

An individual account opens four main areas. The Academy offers "Courses and learning paths for all levels". Labs is the practice side, with "1,500+ hands-on cybersecurity labs", split in the product menu into hacking labs, defensive labs and red team labs. Capture The Flag events let people "Compete in gamified security competitions", and a Job Board lists cybersecurity jobs worldwide. The individual product menu also lists Courses & Certifications, and the company menu includes a Certificate Validation page.

The format is practical. Learners attack and defend real machines and networks instead of only watching lessons, and the home page promises "Real-time, hands-on, offensive & defensive content releases on latest vectors and vulnerabilities." Its pitch addresses anyone who is "New to cyber, seasoned pro, or leading a national program". For readers coming from software development, the use-case list includes Code Vulnerability next to Technical Onboarding and Threat Management, so the catalog covers application security as well as networks.

Around the training sits a large community. Live Sessions on Twitch carry walkthroughs, the Discord server is where members "Chat about labs, share resources and jobs", and the community menu lists Meetups, an Affiliate Program, an SME Program, an Ambassador Program and Parrot OS. A Resource Hub collects "Educational resources for hackers, schools and teams", with a blog, webinars, AMAs, cheat sheets, a glossary, guides and templates, and industry reports. The store sells HTB swag and gift cards. A September 21, 2026 news item, "One plan, complete cyber training: meet the new HTB PRO", announces a single plan for individuals, though the item is only a headline on these pages.

For security teams: the enterprise platform

The business side is described as "Our cyber workforce development platform". The demo panel promises "Maximum curriculum management flexibility, enhanced skills reporting, and engaging gamification features" and lists what a plan includes: an unmatched content library, workforce development plans, centralized user management, advanced analytics and reporting, and tools to source, hire and retain talent. That makes it a training library as much as a lab provider: a manager assigns content, follows each person's progress and benchmarks the team.

The team product menu names Courses & Certifications, Cyber Ranges, Enterprise Attack Simulations, Cloud Infrastructure Simulations, Capture The Flag, Tabletop Exercises and Talent Sourcing. Three exercise products stand out on the home page. Threat Range offers "Team exercises for measurable readiness", Crisis Control lets teams "Test your response in real-world incidents", and Talent Search helps companies "Source and hire validated security talent". Team CTFs are pitched as a way to "Assess cyber readiness with team exercises".

Content is organized for red, blue and purple teams, and the site says it is "mapped to MITRE & NIST". The blue team offer is spelled out in most detail: SOC Readiness Plans covering "monitoring, triage, escalation, and critical tooling", DFIR labs "to rehearse end-to-end breach response and forensic analysis", threat intel paths to "Emulate TTPs, tune detections, and improve hunts", and instant team assessments that "Spin up prebuilt or custom defensive CTFs (180+ scenarios) in minutes." Purple team scenarios "Replicate complex multi-stage threats because modern breaches exploit entire networks." The use cases run from Technical Onboarding, Team Benchmarking and Candidate Assessment to Crisis Simulation and Governance & Compliance, and the industries named are Government, Education, Finance and MSSPs, with a separate public sector offer of "Cyber career development designed specifically for the public sector".

Professional Labs

Professional Labs is the enterprise attack simulation product, where "Employees can practice sophisticated penetration testing on enterprise infrastructure." The page explains: "Professional Labs are training labs simulating real-world scenarios, giving participants a chance to penetrate enterprise infrastructures." The labs are multi-machine, corporate-level networks. A team picks a scenario, owns it, and on completion receives employee certificates plus a company-wide one. The scenarios shown are Red Team Operator I to IV, the FAQ names Dante and Offshore, and testimonials mention RastaLabs.

Scenario Rotation is described as "A flexible, unified subscription. Pick any scenario and swap from one to another." Periodic content additions keep labs current, and the FAQ recommends "keeping a Pro Lab scenario for at least a period of 6 months, in order to benefit from our lab updates." The environment is gamified with points, badges, ranks and leaderboards, and a Hall of Fame is visible only to members of the lab. Fully documented write-ups guide the team step by step; the FAQ says official write-ups are "available ONLY for customers of Professional Labs" and that clients go through an NDA process to receive them.

The admin side covers user monitoring and reporting "through user-friendly graphs and exports", an admin dashboard, and user management. Management features include a private VPN server ("A dedicated VPN gateway will ensure privacy and high performance"), temporary credentials for guest users, on-demand lab redeployment that restores the lab to its original state, and full business and technical support from a dedicated Account Manager. On seats, the FAQ says: "At a minimum, Professional Labs provide 10 user seats. Practically, there is no maximum number of users, as we typically set up multiple training lab instances for a company/organization," which keeps large teams from crowding a single lab. On level: "all scenarios require a certain experience in red teaming or penetration testing," though Dante and Offshore are described as "an excellent opportunity for beginners and junior members".

Customer quotes back this up. A Lead Penetration Tester at Siemens Portugal writes that his team "managed to finish the challenge and leave with much more knowledge than we had before." The Head of Offensive Security at NortonLifeLock notes that "the lab is fully dedicated, so we're not sharing the lab with others" and that the support team "allowed for some firewall changes to make our training fit our needs." A Specialist Master at Deloitte Greece mentions "fully patched Active Directory setups where in some cases deeper research of the published techniques is needed".

AI Range and recent news

The home page announces that "Hack The Box launches the world's first AI Range", described as a controlled cyber range "built to test and benchmark the safety, limits and capabilities of autonomous AI security agents", where "AI agents and human operators are evaluated side-by-side." Two more headlines read "Hack The Box Acquires LetsDefend" and "Hack The Box and Google partner to lead the future of AI security education". The pages carry only those headlines, so the scope of each deal is for the linked articles to explain.

Buying and support

Neither page lists a price for the individual plans or for Professional Labs; business buyers book a demo or fill in the sales form. The page says Professional Labs "is currently available for enterprise customers of all sizes" and sets out four steps: share your training needs, get help choosing a scenario, meet a dedicated Technical Account Manager, then "Assign as many users (seats) as you wish and get started." Support runs through a Help Center, a support contact and a Trust Center, and the footer links a status page and a vulnerability disclosure policy. A Channel & Resellers program and a partner deal registration page exist for resellers.

Who it suits and who it does not

Individual learners who want to learn security by doing will find a deep library: courses for all levels, 1,500+ labs, regular CTFs and a very large community to ask for help. Security managers get a platform that combines a content library with team exercises, reporting and hiring tools, and Professional Labs gives red teams a private corporate network to practice on, with certificates at the end.

The caveats are mostly about scale and style. Professional Labs starts at 10 seats and runs through sales, so a solo consultant or a two-person team will look at the individual plans instead. Most Professional Labs scenarios assume prior red teaming or penetration testing experience, and the 6-month recommendation per scenario suits ongoing programs better than a short workshop. Learners who prefer lectures over hands-on challenges should start with the Academy courses rather than the labs.