News Release
Carlyle leads $55m Series B investment round in Hack The Box
London, UK, 11 January 2023 – Global investment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) announced today that it has led a $55m Series B investment round in Hack The Box, a rapidly growing continuous cybersecurity upskilling and talent assessment platform.
Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Kent, UK, Hack The Box has built a global community of more than 1.7 million platform members and established a portfolio of more than 1,500 enterprise, government and university customers that utilize its platform to take their cybersecurity skills to the next level. Chief Information Security Officers and other senior cybersecurity decision-makers increasingly turn to Hack The Box to assess how secure their organizations look like from an attacker’s perspective and address the weakest link in cyber – the human element – through a performance-driven and thus highly transparent evaluation of in-house and external cyber talent.
The new investment will aim to accelerate Hack The Box’s growth trajectory with a focus on further building out its category-defining “gamer-first” solutions offering with ultra-realistic coding gameplay. The company will also enhance its go-to-market function, doubling down on the company’s ongoing international expansion with strong commercial traction in the US, Europe and APAC.
“Our mission is to create and connect cyber-ready humans and organizations through highly engaging hacking experiences that cultivate out-of-the-box thinking. The game in cyber has changed with defensive, reactive and recovery postures not being fit-for-purpose in the face of an ever-increasing and ever-evolving wave of sophisticated attacks. A new proactive offensive & defensive approach is needed to take the fight to cybercriminals rather than waiting to be hit. From individual security professionals to companies, this means adopting a ‘hacker mindset’, learning to think and act like an attacker. This is the kind of mindset that we cultivate through Hack The Box,” said Haris Pylarinos, Founder and CEO at Hack The Box.
Constantin Boye, a Director in the Carlyle Europe Technology Partners (“CETP”) advisory team, said: “The demands on security and IT professionals have never been greater. An industry-wide talent shortage and an exponentially growing number of cyber threats place great importance on professionals and organizations to maintain best-in-class security practices. We believe Hack The Box is a pioneer in constantly providing fresh and curated training and upskilling content, in a fully gamified and intuitive environment, enabling individuals and organizations to tackle real-world hacking problems. We are excited for the next stage of Hack The Box’s evolution and are proud to be part of this journey.”
Carlyle has a longstanding track record of infrastructure software and cybersecurity investments, including in 1E, Eggplant, ManTech, Coalfire, iC Consult, NetMotion, ITRS, Booz Allen Hamilton and Automic Software (formerly known as UC4).
It has been a busy few months for the CETP team, which has recently announced investments in ETC Group, Incubeta, and Tescan.
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About Hack The Box:
Hack The Box is a leading online gamified cybersecurity upskilling and talent assessment platform that allows individuals, businesses, government organizations and universities to level up their security skills. Since launching in 2017, Hack The Box has brought together a global community of more than 1.7 million platform members, and has built a portfolio of more than 1,500 enterprise, government and university customers that utilize Hack The Box’s hands-on, self-paced, and gamified learning environment to take their cybersecurity skills to the next level. Our mission is to create and connect cyber-ready humans and organizations through highly engaging hacking experiences that cultivate out-of-the-box thinking. With constantly updated virtual labs, real-world scenarios simulation, CTF-style challenges, and multiplayer hacking games, Hack The Box is the reference point for all cybersecurity professionals. With a rapidly expanding footprint across the globe, Hack The Box’s headquarters are located in the UK with additional offices in Greece and the US.
For more information, please visit hackthebox.com
About Carlyle
Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) is a global investment firm with deep industry expertise that deploys private capital across three business segments: Global Private Equity, Global Credit and Global Investment Solutions. With $369 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2022, Carlyle’s purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its investors, portfolio companies and the communities in which we live and invest. Carlyle employs more than 2,100 people in 29 offices across five continents.
Further information is available at www.carlyle.com. Follow Carlyle on Twitter @OneCarlyle.
Media contacts
Carlyle:
Nicholas Brown
+44 7471 037 002
Hack The Box:
Sofia Vourlaki