HackerOne

When you hear the word “hacker” most people have a negative connotation attached to it. They believe that is someone that steals information or “hacks” into a company and steals their secrets. Then when I tell you that a company called HackerOne believes that they will reach $100 million in what they call “bounties paid out”  by 2020 from their business you probably think they are stealing and selling secrets. Not quite.

In today's world with all of information that is stored on the internet it has become extremely important to protect all of this information. This has created a new field of jobs for people that get referred to as hackers.They get paid to “hack” into people’s personal stuff, companies, or even government's databases and steal critical information then sell it to competitors that could be interested in this. Everyday there seems to be another breaking story that some big name companies security has been compromised by a foreign hacker. Or that our election may have been compromised by Russian hackers. Everyday it's something new, how does a company prevent their information prevent this?

This is where HackerOne takes a different spin with that name. HackerOne is a company that you hire to try to hack into your system. Why would you do this? Its simple, to find out where you're exposed.

How it works is that when you hire HackerOne, they start to invite their own freelance hackers. These hackers are trusted individuals that work independently and are incentivized by the company to find critical vulnerabilities. These hackers aren't here to steal the information they are here as security experts. These hackers use their own bugs or applications to try to get into the client's web site or database. After they have done so they deliver their own reports to the company and get paid their “bounty”. The bounty is their payment for finding out the weaknesses in the website.

HackerOne is used to supplement your in house security team. That in house security team can only find so much. Why not add an extra couple hundred eyes? There are going to be hackers poking through your site not matter what, why not have these hackers working for you so you can limit the exposure. This “hacker-powered security” has become so popular they currently have fixed over 52,000 bugs and $20.2 bounties have been paid out. They currently work with: General Motors, Starbucks,Uber, Spotify, and even the United States Department of Defense just to name a few.

Everyday there seems to be a new threat to our security, but it finally seems like there are effective ways to combat this new sensation of hackers. With HackerOne leading the way in Information Security.

- Parker Fifield