14 DAY TRIAL // HackerOne has announced that it managed to attract $40 million in Series C financing and it is now planning to use the cash to grow the platform even more.
HackerOne is a bug bounty platform that’s used by thousands of companies across the world who are looking for researchers that can responsibly look for security flaws in exchange for cash rewards and credit. There are over 100,000 hackers working with HackerOne at this moment.
This is a business that’s become increasingly popular over the years. Many kids passionate about programming and development have turned to looking for security bugs to flex their muscles, becoming white hat hackers in the process. The alternative was much darker and a lot more dangerous due to the illegal nature of it all.
A great trend
Google, Facebook, Microsoft are some of the giants that have their own in-house bug bounty programs. Google, for instance, spent $3 million on bounties in 2016, rewarding researchers for their keen eye. Uber is another company that has paid loads of money to hackers looking for security flaws, thus making their service more secure. The same can be said about all companies that run such programs either internally or with the help of HackerOne.
Last year, when the Pentagon decided it wanted to run a similar program, albeit with restricted access, HackerOne was handpicked to run the show. Then, Hack the Pentagon was followed by Hack the army. “It took us less than 5 minutes to file the first vulnerability report which, in turn, the Army was quick to resolve along with 118 other discovered bugs during the four-week program,” says Marten Mickos, HackerOne CEO.
The Series C funding round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group and was quite successful. After all, with the average cost of a security breach in the United States rising to about $7 million, businesses are more and more interested in joining the program.
The new funds will be used to invest in technology development, to expand market reach and to continue to “strengthen the world’s largest and most diverse hacker community.”