The cybersecurity training provider Hack The Box (HTB) has launched the HTB AI Range, designed to let organisations test autonomous AI security agents under realistic conditions, albeit with oversight from human cybersecurity professionals. Its goal is to help users assess how well AI, and mixed human–AI teams might defend infrastructure.
Vulnerabilities in AI models add to those already present in traditional IT, so before agentic or AI-based cybersecurity tools can be deployed in anger, HTB is proposing a testing environment where AI agents and human defenders can work together under realistic pressure to measure their cybersecurity prowess.
How HTB AI Range works
HTB describes the AI Range as a simulation of enterprise complexity with thousands of offensive and defensive targets that are continuously updated. The platform supports mapping to established cyber frameworks, including MITRE ATT&CK, the NIST/NICE guidelines, and the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10.
HTB says in a recent AI vs. human capture the flag (CTF) exercise, autonomous AI agents solved 19 out of 20 basic challenges. But in multi-step challenges in more complex environments, human teams outperformed the AI agents.
The company suggests AI struggles with complexity and multi-stage operations, and this points to the continuing value of human expertise, especially in high-stakes or complex work.
Testing, and closing the skills gap
Enterprises can use the AI Range to validate whether existing security measures work under AI-powered attacks, give their cybersecurity teams experience of AI-powered threats, and develop more resilient cybersecurity tools based on agentic AI. Such exercises could be used to justify cybersecurity investment to financial decision-makers, Hack The Box suggests.
HTB’s AI Range can be used for continuous testing and validation of cybersecurity defences, which the company states is more effective in the long-term than static audits or pen-testing exercises, and thus is closer to a CTEM model (continuous threat exposure management).
HTB is launching a AI Red Teamer Certification early next year in an attempt quantify the skills necessary to harden AI defences.
At present it seems wise to regard AI cyber-ranges as part of a layered security and resilience offering. As AI matures and frameworks like MITRE ATLAS gain traction, tools like HTB’s AI Range may become standard components in enterprise security programmes.
“Hack The Box is where AI agents and humans learn to operate under real pressure together,” said Gerasimos Marketos, chief product officer at Hack The Box. “We’re addressing the urgent need to continuously validate AI systems in realistic operational contexts where stakes are high and human oversight remains vital. HTB AI Range makes that possible.”
Haris Pylarinos, CEO and founder of Hack The Box said, “For over two years, we’ve been advancing AI-driven learning paths, labs, and research where machines and humans compete, collaborate, and co-evolve. With HTB AI Range, we’re not reacting to AI’s rise in cyber; we’re defining how defence evolves alongside it. This is how cybersecurity advances: not through fear, but through mastery.”
(Image source: “The main cast” by Tim Dorr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
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