How it works
The company opens a program, public or private, offering a financial reward to whoever finds and responsibly reports a vulnerability, instead of exploiting or selling the flaw.
The advantage over a traditional pentest
It tests continuously, with many different people trying, instead of a closed two- or three-week window with a single team.
The downside nobody tells you about
It needs a triage process that actually works, someone validating and prioritizing the reports that come in, or it turns into chaos fast. And it only works well once the basics of security are already handled, otherwise the program gets flooded with reports of obvious issues that consume time without adding value.
Program management
That's exactly the role of bug bounty program management: handling everything from triage to remediation, so the program delivers real value instead of turning into an unanswered inbox.
Already have, or want to open, a bug bounty program?
Request Bug Bounty Program Management