Why is a bug-bounty program important for a company?
The global annual losses from cybercrimes amounted to nearly $1 trillion in 2020 and are expected to rise in the coming years. the businesses operating in the USA, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, France, and Singapore face the most significant damage. Sectors of economy such as banking, utilities, software, industries, automotive, insurance, and high tech have suffered tremendous losses due to cyberattacks.
These are some of the top data breaches of 2022 so far:
Crypto.com was subjected to a severe breach at the start of 2022. The attack took place on January 17th and targeted nearly 500 people's cryptocurrency wallets. Despite the blockchain being a relatively secure transaction method, the thieves used a pretty simple way to get the job done: they circumvented the site's two-factor authentication (2FA). They stole $18 million of Bitcoin and $15 million of Ethereum.
Computing giant Microsoft is no stranger to cyberattacks, and on March 20th, 2022, the firm was targeted by a hacking collective called Lapsus$. The group posted a screenshot on Telegram to indicate that they had managed to hack Microsoft and, in the process, they had compromised Cortana, Bing, and several other products.
Cash App, Block (formerly Twitter) owns this popular mobile payment tool, and in April 2022, the firm acknowledged that a former employee had breached the service’s servers. The firm has contacted more than 8 million customers to tell them about the incident.
FlexBooker, At the end of 2021 and the start of 2022, the appointment management business FlexBooker was hit by a vast attack that affected around three million users. A hacking group called Uawrongteam was responsible for the hack. It wasn’t a particularly sophisticated affair – the group cracked FlexBooker’s AWS servers and installed malware to control the firm’s systems.
What is a Bug bounty program?
The bug bounty program is a step to adopting a proactive stance rather than a reactive one, giving a company the chance to use a hacker's ethical talent to look for vulnerabilities and concealed gaps within software products. A bug bounty program lifecycle starts with the participating/researched company creating a concise explaining the rules of engagement. After a concise is developed and researchers are habituated to it, a program goes 'live' on a bug bounty platform like HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Integriti, etc., where white-hat/ethical hackers are attracted to participate in a program.
Once the program is live, ethical hackers can test the software to find the bugs within the defined scope. The reported vulnerabilities and bugs are submitted through a report further verified by the platform's in-house Triage Team. Consequently, the participating company's security team receives the report with detailed instructions on fixing the vulnerabilities in question. And after the vulnerability is identified as having a potential impact on the business, a fix is initiated with an agreeable timeline to remediate the vulnerability and is verified by the researcher who found that bug. The company rewards the researcher with the sum of money as negotiated.
Core Essentials of a Bug Bounty Program
It is essential to have a reliable channel to ensure security reports end up with the designated individuals or team.
Make sure you define the proper scope for your bug bounty program. Bug bounty programs can be private, invite-only, or fully public.
Responsible vulnerability disclosure program.
Actively communicate with the hackers/reported
Utilize bounty tables to initiate rewards based on severity levels of a vulnerability.
Essential to keep your best practices policy up to date.
Is my business ready for bug bounty?
In 2022, every company with a digital asset must have a vulnerability intake exercise. A holistic vulnerability report gives a clear concept of the decision-making path. It helps the business/organization of any scope make the maximum use of ethical hacker's skills to identify potential gaps and address them most efficiently. Besides waiting for a breach to occur, putting business assets and clients at risk, and losing millions of dollars, a bug bounty program works with curious individuals who benefit from this collaboration.
On average, expert security audits are pricey, whereas a bug bounty program is cost-effective; provided a bug bounty program is 24/7 non-stop security testing of products, a company gets exceptional parallel coverage on vulnerabilities. To see if an organization is ready for the bug bounty program, it has an option to go through an initial intake assessment via questionnaire. In addition, working with ethical hackers makes it possible to assess the security measures in place and identify which are inefficient processes or the ones that require an update.
With companies becoming more accepting of improving their ongoing processes and products, bug bounty programs are gaining velocity as one of the most renowned preventive tools in the context of a data breach. Before leveraging an army of hackers for the business, one should consider several aspects. First, it is essential to define the reason for implementing a bug bounty program. Secondly, working with a trusted and credible partner warrants that the research executed is thoughtfully and responsibly. As a critical part of the business security program, bug bounty is here to change the hacking talent contrariness. At the same time, black hat hackers embrace cutting-edge technologies for their illicit activities, and the whites help the companies be two steps ahead by taking the intellectual to the bright side.
References: Top Data Breaches in 2022
