The Case for an Internal Bug Bounty Program
As AI-powered vulnerability discovery shakes up the industry, one powerful resource for identifying issues is getting left ignored: the people you work with. Your coworkers aren’t just experts in their domain, they’re deeply knowledgeable about your company’s risks. For them those risks may feel well known and accepted, even if your security team was never officially looped in. These employees are sitting on a proverbial mountain of issues they aren’t telling you about - not due to a lack of care, but a lack of procedure and incentive for reporting bugs. One way to provide them with that reporting structure is to run an Internal Bug Bounty program.
What are Internal Bug Bounty programs?
Internal Bug Bounty programs formalize how your security team accepts reports from within your organization. Typically, an employee files a report, your security team triages it and determines its validity, then grants an award if the report is valid. Those awards can vary depending on the severity of the report and type of company running the program, but awarding exclusive swag is a common and effective motivator. The reports will vary too - you’ll end up getting reports about web application security bugs, shared credentials without MFA, long-forgotten vendors, failed offboarding, and gaps in processes you didn’t even know existed.
You may have heard about external bug bounty programs before, which award external security researchers with cash in exchange for valid reports. These researchers are extremely good at finding bugs, but ultimately cannot identify issues gated behind the privileged access your employees have. It's easy to picture this for engineers with source code access, but your “non-technical” users are aware of process and access issues that represent just as much risk to your business as a bug in your software.
An internal program is more than just bugs
Internal Bug Bounties can of course cover software security issues, but they also hold an important audit function. If you’ve ever run an internal audit or pentest, so much of that process is about revealing long-standing issues teams have grown to accept as normal. Getting a third party to tell you what you already know can be useful politically, but you shouldn’t have to wait for an audit to get moving on these “unknown knowns”. An Internal Bug Bounty gives you a chance to learn about these gaps directly from the source: your internal teams.
There’s plenty of tangible value in running an internal program, but it can also help with security awareness even for people who aren’t actively engaging and submitting reports. Just knowing the security team is running a program is a signal that they care about internal issues and take reports seriously. There’s a sort of empowerment that comes with knowing you have a “direct line” to the security team, which contributes to an overall shift from passive security awareness (ex: training) to active participation in making the company more secure. Cultivating a strong security culture is a big part of making more people feel confident engaging with the program.
You're never too early to launch
There isn’t a size or maturity requirement to run an Internal Bug Bounty program, even if it feels too early to launch one. It’s a serious endeavor, but certainly not the same level of effort as fielding external reports. Triaging can take time, but internal reports tend to be much higher signal than other vulnerability sources, so working on them should feel a bit more rewarding than handling a deluge of AI-generated findings. The only real requirement is that you have someone who cares about making the program successful, and some level of internal commitment to address reports.
The shape of what your internal program looks like is truly up to you, even if it’s a Google Form on one end and your CISO shipping out swag on the other. If you’re not sure on the rewards piece, consider starting with a leaderboard or shout-outs in Slack. As the program matures, your design team can tag in to craft up something a bit more enticing. For a less DIY experience, platforms like SevHunt can help streamline reports and rewards into one portal your entire company has access to. Specifics aside, having a clear path and incentive for employees to submit reports is much more important than making things perfect, so don’t hesitate to get something running.
Internal security issues exist whether you run a program or not - an Internal Bug Bounty in its simplest form formalizes how employees communicate with the security team, so not running one means fewer people will speak up about security issues. With that in mind, a lot of this work is really about making your coworkers comfortable and excited to collaborate on security. The bugs are important, but just having a program at all shows your company that the security team takes internal reports seriously, and that everyone has a role in making things more secure.
Run a program with SevHunt
If you’re interested in running your own program, we built SevHunt to make Internal Bug Bounties feel seamless, professional, and fun. We’d love to hear from you whether you run an internal program today or are curious about launching one for the first time.