A bug bounty program is a deal offered by many organizations or software developers by which individuals can receive recognition and compensation for reporting bugs, especially those about exploits and vulnerabilities.

These programs allow the company to discover and resolve bugs before the general public is aware of them, preventing incidents. It's like a reward system where hackers and security enthusiasts get paid to hack responsibly and help improve the security of a software or system.

What an amazing program!

I like to call bug bounty programs the “pay only for value” penetration testers. Unlike your full-time red team, bug bounty participants are free until they find something substantial or at least actionable. Consider these selling points for your security leadership:

1. Free unless real results are delivered
2. Trust culture promotion
   1. Demonstrating a commitment to security through a bug bounty program can improve an organization's reputation. It shows customers, partners, and stakeholders that the organization takes security seriously and proactively protects data.
3. Do I need to say it - enhanced security
   1. Organizations can identify and fix security flaws by incentivizing external security researchers to find vulnerabilities before they are exploited maliciously. This proactive approach significantly strengthens the security posture.
4. Contrary to popular belief, many “hackers” actually look for ethical and fair compensation for their efforts when they discover a problem before turning to the dark web and extortion.
   1. Hackers are like the immune system to the internet-many want to see products fixed and ethically developed.
   2. This also gives the hacker a direct reward for one of their most common motivators-fame. If you are a young person proficient in computers, and you can showcase a bug bounty reward, you are an attractive talent to employers. Give them this credit instead of generating another cyber criminal and personal adversary by threatening a lawsuit.

Consider an Internal bug bounty program.

Build the same for your internal voluntary disclosures!

Treat your employees with the same respect! Build a company policy that gives fair and real compensation for reporting suspicious activity, bugs, or otherwise for your employees. Are you looking for a giant green flag that you have a security culture? Build this and watch the tone change overnight.

Most often, you will be rewarded with a significant number of concerning examples of how malicious insiders and compromised accounts can gain access to data that you didn’t know about. For god sake, see my “respect voluntary disclosures” page before doing so.