Emerson Electric achieves enhanced cyber readiness with HTB

Their story

Emerson Electric has a long-standing legacy of innovation dating back to the 1890s when the company specialized in electric motors. Today, Emerson Electric is a global automation leader operating in more than 150 countries, supporting a broad range of industries, including oil and gas, power generation, water treatment, air conditioning systems, as well as aerospace and defense solutions. With its deep expertise in industrial automation and critical infrastructure, Emerson Electric plays a vital role in ensuring the safety, efficiency, and reliability of essential operations worldwide.

“The entire world revolves around this idea of unbroken supply chains. As time has gone on, I think those supply chains have become significantly more complex, and a major threat that's not talked about enough is the possibility of compromising things further up a supply chain for the purpose of gaining access to things further down.” – Ben Thal, Manager of Emerson Electric’s Offensive Security Team.

Thal leads a team of five engineers responsible for red team operations, penetration testing, threat modeling, and collaborating with Emerson Electric’s defensive team. Together, they conduct Purple Team exercises to reinforce their defenses and ensure the team remains prepared to tackle the latest threats facing the manufacturing and supply chain industries.

Given the critical nature of the work being done at Emerson Electric, a successful cyber attack can disrupt critical operations, compromise intellectual property, affect supply chain integrity, and lead to regulatory consequences. And as attackers continuously refine their methods, security teams must proactively enhance their capabilities to defend against sophisticated threats that could have wide-reaching impacts on global infrastructure.

Their goal

For Emerson Electric, staying ahead of cybersecurity threats isn’t just a priority, it’s a necessity. With a constantly evolving landscape of vulnerabilities, exploits, and attack techniques, the company recognizes maintaining and improving their security posture requires a dedicated focus on continuous training and upskilling. However, finding an efficient, scalable way to do this proved challenging.

“To maintain the current skill level, much less grow, the team really has to intentionally spend a substantial amount of time focusing on training and upskilling. Having the tools in order to do that is quite critical." said Thal. “Doing individual targeted training and trying to shop for those on a regular basis became a huge time sink and a huge cost. We needed a platform where we could have all of that in one place and gain rapid access to new information.”

Emerson Electric had previously tried other training solutions, but they failed to meet the team’s needs. They realized they required a platform that wasn’t focused on industry buzzwords but instead provided hands-on, real-world training.

Beyond accessibility and content quality, Emerson Electric also needed training that could support individual learning paths and collaborative team exercises. Because the company places a strong emphasis on team-based training to encourage skill-sharing, finding a solution that could effectively support individual and group development was difficult.

That’s when Hack The Box emerged as the ideal solution.

Their solution

Having previously used HTB in a personal capacity, Thal saw it as a natural choice when Emerson Electric was evaluating enterprise training platforms. "It was a no-brainer to look at HTB as an option once I found out you guys were exploring getting into the enterprise space. The use cases just fit up really well, and we’ve never looked back. It’s been a great experience."

During the training vendor evaluation process, key factors made HTB stand out to Thal:

1. Platform design and relevance: "HTB is a platform built by hackers for hackers, as opposed to a platform built by a marketing team to sell to CISOs. The training is designed by people with similar experience and a similar mindset to us, which makes it much more efficient and closely aligned with our needs."

2. Structural quality and performance: "The platform runs smoothly, and we don’t waste time troubleshooting errors or dealing with under-allocated resources. That seamless experience makes training much more effective."

3. Content excellence: "HTB’s Dedicated Labs, Professional Labs, and Academy content are top-tier. The breadth of training materials, frequency of content updates, and depth of the challenges are unique in the industry.”

Acknowledging that continuous learning is essential in cybersecurity, a structured yet flexible training regimen was designed around HTB. Team members have the option to follow personalized learning paths tailored to their roles, while weekly collaborative exercises using Professional and Dedicated Lab boxes foster mentorship and knowledge sharing.

Beyond structured training, the HTB platform also provides Emerson Electric with a powerful hands-on sandbox, allowing the team to try out new techniques before live deployment.

"That’s something we’ve done a handful of times using the Dedicated Labs platform, grabbing a box that resembles something we’re about to perform a live engagement on and using that as an avenue for testing out Open Source or otherwise available tools or techniques,” Thal explained. “Having the ability to do this in a controlled environment instead of a live one has saved the team significant time in building out test targets or sandboxed environments."

The use of HTB at Emerson Electric extends beyond just the Red Team. The defensive team and vulnerability management personnel have also adopted the platform to strengthen their capabilities, taking full advantage of HTB’s expanding Blue Team training.

"I was really excited to see HTB move into Blue Team training," Thal said. "A lot of Blue Team trainings that are particularly good either cost an exorbitant amount of money or require a huge time commitment. Having more of a piecemeal incorporation of that into a training platform like HTB creates a lot of value for our Blue Team operators that they don’t get from other sources."

Their success

Since integrating HTB into their training regime, Emerson Electric’s security team has:

• Eliminated the inefficiencies of sourcing individual training resources and vendors

• Supported individual learning paths and team-based exercises, fostering mentorship and skill-sharing

• Saved time on building test environments with HTB’s Dedicated Labs, allowing the team to safely test tools and techniques before live deployment

• Introduced accessible and cost-effective defensive training, improving collaboration between Red and Blue teams

• Strengthened Emerson Electric’s security posture, ensuring the team stays ahead of evolving threats in manufacturing and supply chain security

"HTB has given us the ability to rapidly respond to changes in our required skillset. If leadership shifts priorities, for example if they say we need to focus on API security, we can immediately direct the team to relevant modules and upskill in a timely manner. It saves us the time of sourcing and negotiating, making us more agile and effective."

To ensure training remains aligned with Emerson Electric’s evolving security priorities, Thal conducts quarterly skill gap analyses with each team member, pinpointing strengths, areas for improvement, and high-impact learning opportunities. “We’ve seen an incredible amount of upskilling and expansions in capabilities in the team members that have gone all the way down some of HTB’s training paths. The material provides a great representation of some of the skillsets that are critical to operate in an environment like ours.”

In addition, the platform’s tracking and analytics features have also helped Thal monitor team progress. "The metrics and tracking within HTB are very helpful. I can see what the team is working on, identify if someone is struggling with a particular module, and provide additional support where needed."

For Thal, continuous improvement is the ethos of cybersecurity. "I’m a big advocate for striving for better. If we’re in a better place than we were the last time we checked, whether that’s monthly, quarterly, or annually, it’s an improvement and a step in the right direction. HTB has played a vital role in helping us move forward, and we’re looking forward to continuing our partnership."

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