Bug bounties weren’t on the radar of San Antonio-based Denim Group or its customers as recently as 18 months ago. Today, bug bounty-related services account for roughly 5 percent of Denim Group’s security revenue.
“It’s not yet a significant portion of our business, but it’s growing quickly,” said Dan Cornell, principal and CTO of the software security advisory company. “It’s something that is very interesting to us.”
Denim Group’s differentiator is fully understanding where a bug bounty program fits into the customer’s overall security strategy, Cornell said. As a result, Cornell said Denim Group can effectively determine on a customer-specific basis which security issues should be addressed through threat modeling or internal penetration testing and which should be sent out to the broader researcher community via bug bounty.
Cornell also has tasked some of his team with evaluating and providing context around the vulnerabilities being reported through HackerOne and Bugcrowd. Denim Group doesn’t have a dedicated bug bounty practice today, but Cornell said that could certainly change in the next year or two.
“Even with the stuff the bug bounty providers are doing, we’ve found that a number of organizations still need additional support on top of that in order to provide appropriate context and vetting of the reports that are coming in,” Cornell said.
