All You Need To Know About Bug Bounty Programs

According to Gartner: “By 2022, crowdsourced security testing platform products and services will be employed by over 50% of enterprises, up from less than 5% in 2018.”

Not only top companies but also start-ups are preferring bug bounty programs to reduce the chances of cyber breach.

Let's explore more about bug bounty programs.

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‍What are Bug Bounty programs?

Bug bounty programs are the monetary reward driven security program that encourages the white hat hackers or ethical hackers to discover and report the security vulnerability (or bug) to the organisation(s). Bug bounty programs entice hackers from around the world to reveal and report vulnerabilities in order to prevent cyberattacks and data breaches.

Bug bounty programs are one of the best ways for organisations to test and  improve their security on a regular basis.

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‍Why is there a need for a bug bounty program?

‍Since COVID-19 and the increase in staff working from home, the FBI has reported an increase of 300% in reported cyber attacks.

Internal security teams are hardly able to continuously pentest the application and network on a daily basis. Hence, bug bounty programs give greater scope to find bugs or vulnerabilities with the help of the ethical hacker community. It also increases the chances that bugs are found and reported to organisations before malicious hackers can exploit them.

On the other hand, this has proven to be a cost-saving opportunity for organisations. Because paying a bounty for any vulnerability to ethical hackers is much cheaper than revamping a cybersecurity incident caused by that same vulnerability. Bug bounties are one of the more adaptable approaches to discovering vulnerabilities, and this adaptability aids organisations in their continuous evaluation.

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‍How does the Bug Bounty Program work?

The bug bounty program is a complete process, from finding vulnerabilities to getting rewards for them. Every business defines their budget and scope of their system and according to that ethical hackers can start the security research.

The journey starts with discovering bugs, then hackers report to bug bounty organiser for evaluation. The organisation's internal security team evaluates the reported issues, and if they find them valid then it is passed to the developers for implementing the patch. Once the reported security vulnerability get resolved, hackers will get compensation according to the severity of vulnerability.

In this way, bug bounty programs help organisations prevent cyber attacks and sealing critical security loopholes.

Why you should choose the Pentabug?

Pentabug is one of the premium crowdsourced security & responsible disclosure platform. We are providing outcome - oriented security solutions like bug bounty program , and responsible disclosure. Contact us at hello@pentabug.com to launch your bug bounty program today and defend the black hat hackers from compromising your organisation security.