Bug bounty programs have become the new norm for big businesses and brands, including Google and Facebook. The idea is to engage the community of ethical hackers, who can find security vulnerabilities, flaws, and bugs in products, existing networks, networked devices, apps, programs, and websites. These vulnerabilities are then revealed to the company as per disclosure norms, and ethical hackers get paid in return. As a small company, you can hire an ethical hacker to hack your company’s recorder or test your networks, and it doesn’t have to be about big budgets.
Why are ethical hackers hired?
There are primarily two reasons to hire ethical hackers. The first one is product testing. If you have developed a software program or other apps, you may want independent ethical hackers to test your firmware/software for vulnerabilities. The second reason to hire them is enterprise testing. Businesses are worried about cybersecurity, and they want to know if their IT resources, networked devices, and overall computing environment is safe against hackers and cybercriminals.
How to hire ethical hackers?
There are three different approaches that can be considered for hiring ethical hackers. The first one is to create a bug bounty program, for which your company can set the rules. Payments are only made to ethical hackers if they can find a flaw and disclose the same as per the standard regulations and rules of the program.
The second option is to hire companies that can manage such programs for your business. They will charge a fee for running the program, and they will also offer assistance on payouts and how to reward ethical hackers for the job. Again, payments are only made when a vulnerability is found.
The third choice is to engage a team of ethical hackers who work with a company. These companies will actually charge you for the environment testing and you can expect to get detailed reports in return.
Should you hire ethical hackers?
It depends. As far as cybersecurity is concerned, hiring these hackers and running bug bounty programs are considered to be the best practices as far as maintaining a proactive stance is concerned. Of course, this comes for a cost, and you may want to evaluate the budget and other factors, but with ethical hackers, you can be assured of fixing system flaws before cybercriminals manage to do so.
Find more on bug bounty programs before starting out!