Guide to Bug Bounty: How to implement it effectively

Bug bounty program is a process of identifying vulnerabilities and bugs within a network or a software, organized by a company or vendor, to outsource the penetration testing and audit procedures, to supplement their internal procedures. Normally, the bug bounty comes with excellent rewards for the best bugs identified. 

Moreover, organization should conduct bug bounty programs in a most effective way by using different approaches, by addressing the important properties and handling the disclosure and the overall communication. In this guide, we’ll see why bug bounty programs are important, how can organizations implement them and obtain the most ROI out of this action.

The Need for Bug Bounty Programs

Although cybersecurity professionals equip their network with the right security tools to take care of the firewalls, routers, desktops, servers, laptops and mobile devices, the software exploits are inevitable. Organizations will start promoting this bug bounty campaign to let hackers know they are conducting a public bug reporting program and they will market, once they do hackers will start their usual penetration procedures to find and break through the potential loopholes with a network or a software based on the announcement from the organization. 

This will help CIO and CISO of the organization detect their security loopholes in an easy way, rather detecting and scrutinizing things only from the corporate perspective. Those critical bugs and the reporters will be rewarded with a good amount of cash.

However, few companies do not keep this public, instead they conduct the same only with the invited group of hackers. Facebook, Twitter, Apple and other major fortune 500 companies are doing this in regular intervals to keep their network secured. To plan and execute an effective bug bounty program, companies should make sure their implementation does not have any pitfalls. In this guide, we’ll see the best practices for conducting an effective bug bounty program.

When to do a Bug Bounty Program?

Most of the organizations usually do have penetration testers to scrutinize their software or network, but pen testers are usually a part of their routine and there is no guarantee that we would end up finding a bug in the end. But in case of bug bounty, there will be results and it will be a one time access to global talents. 

Advantage:

• Access to global talents.
• Better than full time testers and researchers as we have results by the end of the program.
• Organizations will increase their security, and brand reputation can be saved.

Disadvantages

• Organizations will not be differentiate the malicious hack intent while conducting this program.
• Few hackers can go beyond the limit and access more confidential information.
• Dispute over the rewards could lead to public disclosure of the bugs.

Choosing the type of bug bounty- Public, Private, Self, and Third Party

Organizations should decide whether they should go ahead and do this entire activity for the public audience or only with the invited list of private hackers. Also they can choose from the number of third party bug bounty organizers like hackerone, bugcrowd and more to avoid unnecessary operational pitfalls. 

If this is going to be orchestrated completely by the organization itself, the below list of best practices can come in handy. 

Best practices for implementing a bug bounty program

Strategize the initial readiness

Organizations must have the right amount of security professionals, engineers, and testers to qualify the incoming bug reports during the bug bounty program. Once the bugs are reported the security team has to qualify, verify and approve it for further processing. Then your engineers have to fix the same and testers have to double check the fix and prepare the same for release and update.

Few checklist to be made by your team,

• Handling tickets for incoming bu reports should be handled by helpdesk solutions.
• Appoint a on-call engineer to handle prompt requests.
• Handling of tickets in a rotational basis for non-stop assistance during the program duration.
• Taking care of different time zones.
• Regular reports, updates and analysis.
• Instant communication and PERT diagrams for the overall project

Building an effective response team is the first start towards this bug bounty program. 

Plan and streamline the financials

Financial consumption can spread into four dimension- Functional, Bounties, Miscellaneous and Overhead costs. 

• Functional costs for establishing a new team, the resources to handle the incoming tickets, implementing the fix and presenting the same on time.
• Bounties are the rewards that are being offered as rewards for the hackers.
• Overhead costs could be due to the overwhelming response of reports.
• Miscellaneous expense could be anything that facilitated the overall bounty program.

Start your bounty programs privately first, identify the number of tickets and close the vulnerabilities that are huge, that can give access to business sensitive data and then take this forward to public. 

Build good relationship with the hackers

Hackers who report the bigs should be treated fair to give the first impression about your enterprise. Since these hackers must have a already existing community to share their gyan, it’s good that the organizations treat them fairly else they could disclose the vulnerabilities in hacker forums for damaging your brand and image.

Establishing a good relationship with the frequent reporters and sustain their relationship for mutual benefits.

Meet the hackers expectation

These bug bounty hackers are doing an effort to showcase their skills and get some monetary benefits. Stick by your rules always and award them the promised sum of amount without any second thoughts are diluting their efforts. To do that, organizations first follow rapid response procedures, to address the tickets in-time before the hackers get frustrated and disclose this in public.

If more than one reporter has identified the same bug, rewards should be handed over to the first reporter. Encourage the reporters to participate continuously for streak of rewards every month. 

Intensify the payments and rewards

Organization should decide on a sensible amount to keep the hackers enthusiastic and happy to reap the benefits. Also the payment procedures should be spontaneous, as not all of them will have a good patience.

• Do not pay for all the submissions, but for the valid and critical ones in time.
• Build their trust and relationship by good rewards for excellent find.
• Try to equip different means of payment, including bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies.
• Document their names and profiles if provided to add them to your ‘Most Valuable Hacker’ list and keep rewarding them for their prolonged contributions and efforts. 

Summary

Bug bounties can be rewarding for organizations to identify their network or software vulnerabilities in a short time, but they also need to understand only an effective cybersecurity strategy, skilled IT security professionals and on-time auditing can keep their network and software free from loopholes. 

Remember, Bug Bounty is only an additional security strategy to reinforce your existing IT security.