Video: How Hack The Box Fast-Tracks Enterprise Deals With Channel Partners

hey Channel insiders I'm your host Kati boso and welcome to this episode of partner POV brought to you by hack the Box oftentimes doing business with massive Enterprises means a lot of red tape and a long process that's why hack the Box prioritizes doing business through Channel Partners today you'll hear how hack the box works with Partners to grease the wheels and expedite deals with some of the largest Brands and open up new Revenue opportunities for solution providers and resellers I'd now like to welcome my guest today Enterprise account executive at hack the Box Heather hotot welcome Heather hey great to see you this morning Australia time Katie thanks for H making some time in your afternoon for me great to see you this evening and East Coast time for me thank you so much for making time in general I would love to start to Heather by exploring hack the Box's solution portfolio hack the box or htb as I like to call you sometimes is very focused on upskilling cyber security teams through a gamified approach as of course you know but the first thing on every business Leader's mind is their budget so why should chronically underfunded and perhaps even underresourced cyber security teams consider adding on hack the boox solutions and how can your partners approach this subject with those perhaps hesitant clients yeah it's a great question thanks Katie um honestly you almost H at it in the way that you say and if you're underfunded and underresourced the most important thing that you can do is invest in your people because when you have very few resources you're asking your people to do a lot and I'm assuming most people who are listening uh if they're at all familiar with cyber security they've heard our number one phrase the cyber security skills Gap it's the phrase that creates endless articles endless news there aren't enough cyber security practitioners out there and the good ones have plenty of options for their career if you're going to be an employer of choice if you're going to be a great place to work you need to be investing in your staff and one of the easiest most budget-friendly ways to do that is to be providing your teams with a platform like hack the Box hack the Box not only provides education and a platform to build the skills of your existing team to move them up to the next level and certify them and give them those education opportunities thereafter but also education opportunities for people to cross skill into cyber security which is a major opportunity as well as the labs and the environments for people to display and practice their skills so you know that your teams are incident ready you know that your teams are capable of going out and Performing when it really matters so when you're looking at budget line items it's often an area that people oh my gosh we'll just put in another piece of technology we'll just put in another piece of technology none of the technology matters if your people are continually uninvested in because they can go elsewhere and even if they don't go elsewhere how are they going to have the skills to stay up to speed with the pace that things are moving in the world right now right cyber secur is a very fast industry one of the ways that hack the Box really differentiates from anything else I see on the market is our time to release like the best content in the business right we help our teams stay incident ready be aware of the latest threats latest attack vectors and get hands-on experience with them fast this is one way that actually can be quite affordable uh quite easy to justify from an expenditure point of view that can make your team feel like you really care and show that you're putting your money where your mouth is um both into your people but also up to your Executives that hey we're making sure that we aren't just throwing away money on new tech we're building the capability to really Excel beyond that in terms of I think you had mentioned the partner piece of things and you know how we work with Partners or what the value ad for partners is we're extremely lucky here at hack the box from an Enterprise perspective because we were built by hackers for hackers right were really incredibly trusted within that Community because we've been serving them exceptionally well for over8 years at this point we were started by somebody who was an aspiring hacker who wanted to be able to test his skills without getting arrested which is pretty ambitious goal that was the seed of the journey that we're on today where we now build handson training and the Readiness labs for offensive and defensive cyber security practice I always say if it's anything handson technical cyber security we're going to have best-in-class training to keep those folks where they're at up to the next level branching into other directions right and we have a lot of expertise on how to build those programs for partners I think we're great at being incredibly credible almost every Hands-On technical cyber security practitioner will be familiar with hack the box we have a community of 3 million users who've used us at some point in their own individual dual training Journeys and to bring that into them as an Enterprise solution they know what the quality they know that it's fun they know they're going to get value out of it so it helps you as a channel partner bring something to the team that they're actually going to be really excited about heav you also talked about the The credibility behind the hack the Box name the value that customers and partners alike know that it brings to Market when they hear that name so how does the hack thebox brand name build credibility for your clients the ones who are using it when when they say that your products are a part of their cyber security training and upscaling when I think about the credibility piece it's an interesting lens on it I'd say that for the teams that are using the hack the boox Enterprise platform as an example um which is typically where I'm focusing our time and hopefully for our audience I might just make a quick clarification you know we are a community platform and we're an Enterprise platform right both have great offerings and great value um Community is more about individuals who are selfmotivated going out on their Journey um Enterprise being more for businesses that are looking to build best-in-class cyber capability development programs as it relates to that Enterprise platform for those people that might be familiar with it from a community perspective but haven't seen it in a business context what is adding value or where they're getting really captured is our approach to building material it is all about quality it is all about relevance it is all about things that are going to move the needle in terms of building someone's capability and Readiness as a cyber security professional right everything we do is real world orientated it's not just o this is cool and fun but it will never be applicable it's going to be something that actually gets them better at the work they have to do and that's I think how hack the Box's credibility really helps in that Enterprise context how can selling hack The Box open new doors and networking opportunities for your partners yeah I love working uh with the ch Channel and I think that hack the Box can be an incredible uh compliment into a cyber security portfolio for the channel I've actually worked in the channel for quite some time uh and so I always bring the lens to it of hey if I were the channel partner here why the heck would I be spending any time with hack the box and so when I look at it from a channel partner perspective I really think that we are an incredible compliment to people who are talking about okay yes you're going to have this major seam project or we're doing a huge uh cyber security uplift and we're going to need this technology this technology this technology hack the Box becomes a beautiful play and how are we actually looking at making sure that our people who have to run all of this are engaged are ready have the skills that we need to continue to execute as we continue on this journey and also hack the box has a reputation for being fun right we're well known and we have great capability in delivering events one of the things that we're talking about doing with some of my partners in this region this year are co-branded ctfs capture the flags where using hack the boxes Capture the Flag platform that we use to run amazing events we'll do something bringing in some of their target accounts or their kind of uh key customers uh and have like a fun day of getting more into cyber security getting hand hands on the keyboards and having a great time learning growing and experiencing hack the box it's one of those things where learning and fun don't have to be mutually exclusive uh and I think hack the box has always done a really great job doing that Heather you actually mentioned something earlier where you took the words right out of my mouth because you actually come from a very deep channel background you started on the vendor side you went to the reseller side so you are a big Advocate already for doing business through the channel so what are some things that you absolutely know your channel partners are looking for from their vendor partners and how does hack the Box stack up yeah I have an immense amount of empathy for my channel Partners I think that's sometimes a rarity on the vendor side of things uh to hopefully understand my channel Partners world I know not every channel partner is the same but in my world I was uh in the value added reseller side of things primarily like a Services business right the lens that I've taken from that experience that I bring to hack the boxes I try to be pretty realistic about where I think that we fit in as part of someone's channel strategy I don't expect that I'm going to start working with a new channel partner and their next move will be to drop their top Focus areas and push hack the Bucks really hard my expectation is that I will be leading the first few deals or we might start out where it's primarily pass through opportun unities you know the type of products I would get excited about when I was a reseller were ones where okay I had to quote this a couple of times and then I'm like well what exactly does this do why are these customers interested in this what other of my customers are gonna will get value from this oh okay I see the value now because I've lived it and now I'm excited to go out right I think I see vendors sometimes make a mistake in feeling like channels in is the only thing that's valuable and I'm really passionate about Channel out like if I can send like bring in a partner into a deal and that's going to speed up my time to get the deal done or if I'm able to bring a partner into the deal and they're going to know the procurement process better than I am or if I'm going to be able to bring a partner into the deal and it's just going to make everyone's life easier in some way that's a great start for me and then on the back end of that I also now have that position where that partner hopefully is like starting to be like okay well this hack the Box this is the second or third time that we've worked together uh let me actually like dive deep oh I have like three other customers that I think would be really interested in this we're a really nice compliment um in many parts of a portfolio like if you're talking to cyber security teams or teams that are talking a big game as it relates to cyber security I feel like we're such a no-brainer for channel partners that want to have um a play in that space it's a real hashtag if you know you know and in this case they're going to know no I I'm pretty sure I'm at the demographic bracket where I don't get to use the hashtags in that way um I what was it my daughter uh described herself as skib Sigma today and I just officially tapped out all right Heather let's get into my personal favorite part of the interview the real world success story in which hack the box and a channel partner closed a major deal with an Enterprise customer and in this case that customer was one of the largest tele Communications companies in Australia so walk me through this journey and tell me how the channel partner was involved and what made this such a success I'm really excited to talk about this one so this one you know had mentioned earlier like I'm big fan of of Channel out this is very much the situation with uh this opportunity so I'd had one of the largest uh in telecommunication companies here in Australia if they' reached out about um looking at a hack the Box solution we'd scoped out we were at the point where we were talking about actually procuring the solution they were pretty serious and as soon as they were indicating they really wanted to actually pull the trigger I was like great I have approximately 0% interest in going through York guys's procurement system it would probably have been a 10 week at least process to get through on boarding with these guys and all the back and forth legal and I said we've got to find somebody who you guys like working through who I like working through that we can identify together together that will help us get this done and the person I was working with said yep that sounds great between the two of us we were able to identify uh a very well-known International reseller um who I've done a good amount of work with who I found really really easy to deal with they were already set up as a vendor for that Telco I reached out to my main point of contact and they were able to you know basically just quickly get a quote onto paper get it over to my person and then they ended up adding so much more value than just getting us to isue the legal process our reseller had already done a lot of work within this account and knew the procurement process there inside out made the process so easy for my buyer to understand how to walk through and got it I mean I want to say that we had everything done in about two weeks maybe three weeks Which Way exceeded my expectations for for Speed on this I loved hearing that story and it makes me want to know about the future for those listening what should that story indicate to Partners who are considering working with you how can they replicate this level of success as a hack the boox partner I can't speak for every partner and how they work and what they look for but I can speak for what I know my Approach is and what the channel team's approach is here we are an incredibly collaborative team as it relates to our approach to the channel our expectation is that everyone is going to start on their hack the Box Journey at a different point in time you might want to become a reseller just for opportunistic deals like the type that I mentioned you might hear what I was saying earlier about building programs and be like oh my God we're in so many cyber uplift program deals at the moment this is such a no-brainer for us we want to make this a strategic component we are able to really build our Channel relationship in a way that meets the our our partners needs we have a really amazing Channel team here uh that is absolutely happy to field queries if you're here in Australia or New Zealand and you want to reach out to me directly I'm absolutely happy to kind of at least get the conversation started and kind of help you understand what path we might take as it relates to what that Journey looks like I think everyone is a little bit different but we're really committed to understanding what our what our Channel Partners need and giving them the tools they need to be successful on their hack the Box selling Journey right whether that's collateral whether that's do demos together whether that's joint events whether that's um doing collaborative workshopping like we really don't have a lot of limit on in terms of how creative we can get when we think about working together hack the Box unveiled its partner program in May of 2024 so it's still very new why is now a great time for resellers and solution providers to sign up and who would make an ideal partner candidate I think that now is an excellent time to become a hack the Box partner because we're at the point in our like in our maturity where a lot of businesses are starting to see the need for something like an ongoing training platform right I would say that even when I started a year and a half ago the appetite for that and understanding why they needed to be doing ongoing training in house was not as mature as it is now and I think that's only continuing so more and more businesses are seeing the need for a platform like hack the box so it's a great growth mod moment and again I'd also say that we have the right team in place at the moment to help our Channel Partners Thrive with hack the box as part of its ecosystem and again I think we're a really non-nonsense business like we understand what channel Partners need and how they operate and we're able to really tailor how we work together to meet what they're looking for so I would say the ideal type of Channel partner probably two major Pro like profiles when I think about it one being hey you are a large player and you're doing a bit in cyber security right now um you know you're on a lot of different panels globally and cyber something that you know you should should be doing more in or you have an expertise but you know that there's still some gaps and you want to have a more fully-fledged portfolio I'd say that hack the box is an amazing complement in any uh kind of cyber capability portfolio for a large player or for those Niche Boutique consultancies uh that are pure play cyber security not always Boutique because you can be quite big but if you're a pure play cyber security consultancy and you do some product resell I would say that hack the box is a really nice player in that number one you might actually make a really great training option for your teams if you're delivering cyber security services so happy to talk about that as well but uh when you're going out to your customers and helping them build programs hack the box is a real no no-brainer so I would say those are probably the two that jump to mind if you're not within that kind of those sort of things or you're like hell well I'm interested in this but we do more education I think that that's absolutely something that we're we're interested in talking about I don't want to be limiting too much but those are definitely the two profiles that pop to mind first and in this case we talked about an Enterprise that's based in Australia but just to clarify where can your partners be located around the world anywhere in the world I'm here in Australia I've got a team here in Australia um we have a global footprint we're headquartered in Greece we also have a major footprint in the United States in the UK if it's a place that has cyber security teams then we are absolutely open to talking about partnership with you wherever you're located and how can interested solution providers sign up and get started at hack thebox as a hack thee boox partner where can they go hack thebox.com partners and then then you can also reach out to our Channel team who again they're absolutely amazing they're at Channel Partners at hack thebox.com Channel Partners nobreak hackthebox.eu out your guys' uh approach to cyber capability development Heather thank you so much for your time today and thanks to you at home for joining us for more episodes of partner POV check out channel insider.com once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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