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Sydney's Bugcrowd lands $6m from venture capitalists

'Enterprise is ready' for mass hacking fest

Vulnerability mercenary outfit Bugcrowd has scored $6 million in Venture Capital funding.

The Series A funds for the crowd-sourced security testing outsourcer have been provided by Costanoa Venture Capital, Rally Ventures, Paladin Capital Group and Australian outfit Blackbird Ventures.

Bugccrowd founder Casey Ellis says the company's goal remains levelling the vulnerability management playing field.

"It has been our goal since we set out, to level the vulnerability assessment playing field by bridging the gap between skilled security researchers and customers in need of effective security testing," Ellis says in a post.

"We have recently surpassed our benchmark of 15,000 security researchers, all of whom our hats go off to each and every day, and whom made this round of funding possible."

Ellis says some of his biggest clients across its 160 bug bounty programs includes Western Union, Pinterest, Barracuda Networks, and Silent Circle.

Bug hunters had flocked to the startup, which now boasts some 15,000 registrants. Each signs up to have a chance to hack Bugcrowd clients in a bid to get paid as the first hacker to report major vulnerabilities.

That crowd-sourced hacking seeded initial fears that the platform would be too risky for large enterprises or financial institutions despite that the testing took place over dedicated infrastructure such that it could be distinguished from external attacks.

Bugcrowd advisor Jeremiah Grossman of WhiteHat Security says those fears have been doused with enterprises signing up for the hack-fest.

“Bugcrowds’s traction with more traditional enterprises outside of early tech companies is demonstrating the market is ready," Grossman says. BugCrowd will now hire an unspecified number of new operations and sales staff.

Last year company engineer Drew Sing offered tips to deploying internal bug bounty programs noting that it should contain a clear and easy to read policy, and where possible offer rewards of cash, not tee-shirts. ®

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