HackerOne Hacktivity

HackerOne is a vulnerability coordination and bug bounty platform that connects businesses with penetration testers and cybersecurity researchers. It was one of the first companies, along with Synack and Bugcrowd, to embrace and utilize crowd-sourced security and cybersecurity researchers as linchpins of its business model; it is the largest cybersecurity firm of its kind.As of May 2020, HackerOne's network had paid $100 million in bounties.

In 2011, Dutch hackers Jobert Abma and Michiel Prins attempted to find security vulnerabilities in 100 prominent high-tech companies. They discovered flaws in all of the companies, including Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Twitter. Dubbing their efforts the "Hack 100", Abma and Prins contacted the at-risk firms. While many firms ignored their disclosure attempts, the COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, passed on the warning to their head of product security, Alex Rice. Rice, Abma and Prins connected, and together with Merijn Terheggen founded HackerOne in 2012.[1] In November 2015, Terheggen stepped down from his role as CEO and was replaced by Marten Mickos. In November 2013, the company hosted a program encouraging the discovery and responsible disclosure of software bugs. Microsoft and Facebook funded the initiative, known as the Internet Bug Bounty project. By June 2015, HackerOne's bug bounty platform had identified approximately 10,000 vulnerabilities and paid researchers over $1 million in bounties. In September 2015, the company launched a Vulnerability Coordination Maturity Model, which then-policy chief Katie Moussouris described as “an important effort from HackerOne to codify some reasonable minimum standards on how organizations handle incoming, unsolicited vulnerability reports.” In April 2017, the company announced 240% year-over-year customer growth in Europe, and the subsequent opening of additional European offices to serve increasing customer demand.

Since the release of the 2019 Hacker Report two years ago, the HackerOne community has doubled in size to over one million registered hackers. While much of the community is still exploring and learning, there has been a 63% increase in the number of hackers submitting reports in 2020. That’s a 143% increase since 2018, demonstrating that hackers are growing their skills and expertise as organizations and industries across the globe invest in hacker-powered solutions. Hackers earned $40 million in 2020 alone, contributing to reaching the milestone of $100 million paid out to hackers on the HackerOne platform. Nine hackers have earned over $1 million dollars on the platform since 2019, and one hacker passed the $2 million mark in 2020.

HackerOne like Bugcrowd have an online course to help people find bugs in a security system and other cybersecurity techniques. Each crowd source security platform will have a different approach and a specific goal they focus on. HackerOne primarily focuses on penetration testing services with security certifications, including ISO 27001 and FedRAMP authorization. While others in the field, like Bugcrowd, focus on attack surface management and a broad spectrum of penetration testing services for IoT, API, and even network.