How is crowdsourcing helping enterprises stay on top of cybersecurity?

 

 

 

At present, cyber attacks are a growing reality and almost every online business is vulnerable to them. Cybint reports that a cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds. Due to this issue, many individuals and companies are taking on the responsibility of finding ways to defend organizations against them. Crowdsourced security is a common approach for achieving this.

 

What is Crowdsourced Security?

To put it simply, crowdsourced security is an approach of gathering a large number of people to uncover bugs in business networks or systems. It is essential to get help from white hackers to ensure the security of IT infrastructures and applications. The number of hackers which simultaneously are testing network vulnerabilities can be fewer than ten to several dozen.

 

Obviously, the more hackers who work on an online system for the purpose of finding bugs and vulnerabilities, the more likely it is that every breach will be discovered. The majority of security platforms tend to register numerous hacker accounts. For vendors, this can improve their trust and confidence.

With over 3000 of white hackers registered with SecureBug crowdsourced security platform, any network can be as secure as it can be.

 

By getting rewards for network bugs they find, hackers will have a competitive advantage. It can be quick and cost-effective for organizations to strengthen their cybersecurity defenses by rewarding hackers who find a weakness.

 

Why Crowdsourced Security?

 

According to Varonis only 5% of company folders are properly protected. Thus, this means 95% of folders are not. It illustrates how important cyber security can be especially for organizations with sensitive data. What you need to ask is, how can you make sure you’re protecting your network sufficiently?

 

Due to the inequality between attackers and defenders, crowdsourced security can be an effective method to combat cybercrime by bringing together ethical hackers and security experts. The advantages of crowdsourced security go well beyond that.

 

 

Solving Human Problems Requires Human Help

 

Cybersecurity is a problem caused by humans. It is therefore best to seek human help to fix this issue. An attacker who changes their tactics from time to time will not be slowed down merely by a constant tool and product. However, a professional ethical hacker can identify vulnerabilities in your network and protect it from external threats.

 

Cyberattacks can be prevented by contacting the hacker community. Ethical hackers are the only ones who can anticipate an attacker’s next move and find your vulnerabilities before the attacker does. Hence, you can feel assured that the information on your network is as protected as possible.

 

A Less Expensive Way

 

On the open market, specialized skills would be too costly and difficult to locate. Crowdsourcing for security can provide access to a wide range of such specialized skills. Additionally, companies only reward bounties when bugs are discovered, so they’re no-win no-fee. therefore, it is an efficient way of increasing existing resources.

 

Diversity of Thoughts

 

Bringing together a wide variety of contributors to a problem-solving exercise allows a company to utilize a wide range of skills, experience, and perspectives it might not have otherwise had access to. Regardless of which industry you use crowdsourcing for, never underestimate its power.

SecureBug, a platform with over 3000 registered ethical hackers, is a great example of crowdsourcing. Using Nordic identity verification systems to verify all hunters makes this platform a trusted method to protect against cyber attacks.

 

What’s Better: Crowdsourced Security Testing or Traditional Pen testing?

 

 

It has become increasingly popular to crowdsource security, pushing traditional penetration-testing companies out of what was once a lucrative niche. Many organizations have stopped conducting pen tests entirely in recent years due to the popularity of crowdsourced security offerings. This preference for crowdsourced security can be defined by comparing it with traditional pen testing.

 

Limited vs. Unlimited Engagements

 

One of pen testing’s biggest shortcomings is the fact that it can’t match application development speed. As a general rule, most companies conduct penetration tests every year; however, in today’s world, applications are updated nearly every day.

Rather than being limited like traditional pen tests, crowdsourced pen tests are open-ended like applications today and how attackers actually behave.  Unlike traditional pen testers, who don’t have the luxury of spending three to four months studying an asset, an attacker can spend that much time looking at your assets. Crowdsourced pen testers, however, find highly critical bugs on live sites they have been researching for years.

 

Vulnerabilities vs. Proofs-of-Concept

 

In this case, it’s best to first become familiar with the pen tester syndrome. This happens when a pen tester makes things appear more difficult than they actually are. It has almost become a common issue among ethical hackers and pen testers who imagine that the bug they found is critical.

 

Using a crowdsourced pen test, you would only receive exploitable vulnerabilities with practical proofs of concept. By doing so, companies are able to focus on remediation efforts where they count rather than chasing hypothetical risks. Crowdsourced security excels in this area.

 

Reporting Strategies

 

 

Traditionally, a pen test report is delivered to a client as a PDF at the conclusion of each test. Crowdsourced security, however, has a different reporting method. A security platform that gathers ethical hackers to find vulnerabilities and bugs provides reports much faster than that. Security pen test platform reports from SecureBug, for example, are updated in real time.

 

Register your company in the SecureBug security platform for free and find out what makes us different from other crowdsourced security companies!