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Cyber readiness platform, Hack The Box, has published its 2026 Global Cyber Skills Benchmark Research Brief, a three-year analysis showing that cybersecurity teams are solving challenges faster, completing more of the challenge set and increasingly incorporating AI agents into their workflows.
The findings point to a shift in how competitive cybersecurity practitioners approach their work, with AI tools becoming a visible part of the toolkit used by high-performing teams.
AI Agents Concentrated Among Top Performers
The data reveals a notable gap between overall AI adoption and its prevalence among top-ranked teams.
AI agent accounts made up just 2.7 per cent of all registered accounts across the competition. However, 17 of the top 25 teams – 68 per cent – had at least one AI agent account.
Those agents accounted for 4.2 per cent of submitted flags and 4.6 per cent of points awarded.
Hack The Box noted the findings do not establish that AI caused teams to perform better. They do, however, show that AI is already part of the approach used by many of the competition’s highest-ranking teams.
Solve Times Drop, Full Completions Surge
Performance across the competition has shifted substantially over the three-year period covered by the analysis.
Median recorded time-to-solve dropped from 26.1 hours in 2024 to 13.8 hours in 2026, a reduction of more than 12 hours.
The number of teams completing the entire challenge board rose from two in 2024 and three in 2025 to 15 in 2026, even as the board expanded in scope.
Human Judgment Remains Central
The Founder and CEO of Hack The Box, Haris Pylarinos, argued that the results underscore the continued importance of human expertise alongside AI tools.
“The question for security leaders is no longer whether AI will become part of cybersecurity operations. That is already happening on both sides of the equation,” Pylarinos commented.
“What matters now is whether teams have the expertise to use it safely and effectively. Our data shows that AI is appearing most often alongside some of the strongest practitioners, not instead of them.”
“As agents become more capable, human judgment, validation and hands-on technical skill become more important, not less,” he added.
Broader Industry Context
The findings arrive as AI reshapes both sides of the cybersecurity equation. Hack The Box pointed to recent industry disclosures, including Hugging Face’s July 2026 incident disclosure and OWASP’s Q1 2026 GenAI exploit roundup, as examples of how AI is creating new risks while also becoming part of the attack surface and the defensive response.
For security leaders, the challenge is not simply adopting AI but ensuring practitioners have the skills and judgment to direct, test and validate its output.
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From Experimentation To Working Practice
The research brief builds on earlier Hack The Box research that examined AI and cybersecurity performance in controlled conditions. While that earlier benchmark explored what happens when practitioners work with AI in a structured setting, the latest data provides a view into where AI agents appear when competitors are free to choose their own approach.
Together, the two sets of findings suggest AI is moving from experimentation into the working methods of experienced cybersecurity practitioners.
At the same time, the results reinforce the role of human expertise in directing, evaluating and validating AI-generated work.
The full 2026 Global Cyber Skills Benchmark Research Brief is available on the Hack The Box website.
Hack The Box operates a cyber readiness platform used by Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and managed security service providers. The platform has a community of more than 4.3 million members and more than 800 enterprise customers.
Last Updated on August 26, 2026 by Nick Ross
