My career has taken me on an incredible journey. From being a commissioned officer in the Navy and serving in Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom, to Apple to the Pentagon, I’ve spent the better part of my life following and homing in on my passion. That’s what brings me here, to Bugcrowd.
Having spent the last year running the “Hack the Pentagon” program for the Department of Defense, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of the crowdsourced bug bounty model and security testing.
In the last twenty years we’ve seen a not-so-gradual shift. As more of our lives have moved to the Internet we’ve literally created a whole new frontier, and it’s only growing. From a security perspective, this new frontier also adds another area to protect. Where we once fought wars on land, sea and in the sky, we now need to not just consider cyber, we need to shore it up and secure it.
The concerns of this new frontier are real, but the opportunity is also great. We all benefit from the capabilities and efficiencies the Internet brings. It’s a major economic driver. And with a rush to bring products to market quickly and make public sector information easily accessible, we’ve unintentionally created a massive and growing number of vulnerabilities. This is where companies like Bugcrowd come in.
Bugcrowd brings together a global community of skilled hackers with organizations and government agencies that need help shoring up their security. This isn’t a concept anymore, it’s a reality. I’ve heard from Fortune 500 customers who received 90 vulnerabilities, and 7 times as many critical and high severity vulnerabilities, within the first 30 days of their Bugcrowd Bug Bounty program. This was compared to just 15 discovered by their previous penetration test. This model doesn’t just work for the enterprise. Any willing, able hacker can and will find vulnerabilities that traditional methods have overlooked…sometimes for years.
It goes without saying that as a program owner of one of the most successful bug bounty programs in the world, I have a solid grasp of the market. That’s why I’m so excited to be at Bugcrowd.
Started by Casey Ellis, a visionary with deep roots in security, Bugcrowd has stuck with its founding mission: to connect the market with a global community of skilled researchers, filling the cybersecurity skills shortage, while providing an opportunity for hackers around the globe to make a living making us all more secure.
This is what drew me to Bugcrowd. To be the voice of the researcher community, promoting ethical hacking, while shoring up the security of the services we use every day. This is what attracted me. It’s all about values at the end of the day.
And so I am beyond thrilled to start the next chapter of my journey at Bugcrowd, helping grow the business in the public sector and execute on Casey’s vision.
