Managed bug bounty
Managed bug bounty, built around actionable findings.
Bring ethical hackers into your security program with Hackrate managing report validation and researcher coordination. Your team stays in control of scope, reward decisions, and remediation, while a structured workflow connects external discoveries to the people who can fix them.
From discovery to resolution
THE RIGHT MODEL FOR YOUR TEAM
What is a managed bug bounty program?
A managed bug bounty program combines an authorized, reward-based testing program with operational support from a security partner. Researchers investigate the assets you place in scope and submit evidence of potential vulnerabilities. Hackrate reviews submissions for technical validity, relevance, reproducibility, and impact, and coordinates the conversation needed to make a report actionable. The program creates an ongoing route for independent discoveries alongside your existing security work.
Management and participation are separate decisions. A managed program can be private, with invited researchers, or public, with broader participation under published rules. Choose the operating support your team needs first, then decide who should have access. Bug bounty also complements a scoped penetration test: researcher-led discovery does not promise that every target, feature, or vulnerability class will receive a predetermined level of coverage.
Explore the Hackrate platformValidated findings for your team
Hackrate reviews incoming reports, requests missing evidence, and assesses technical impact. Engineers receive findings with the context needed to investigate, rather than every raw submission arriving directly in their backlog.
Coordinated researcher communication
Keep clarification, reproduction questions, and status updates connected to the report. An agreed communication workflow helps your team work with external researchers without spreading sensitive details across unrelated inboxes.
A program shaped around your risk
Define assets, exclusions, test accounts, reward criteria, and escalation contacts before launch. Start with a controlled scope and adjust it as your organization learns from findings and operational demand.
A shared route to remediation
Track accepted findings and the work needed to resolve them in the Hackrate platform. Keep technical evidence, prioritization, ownership, and researcher discussions connected as a report moves through its lifecycle.
FROM SCOPE TO REMEDIATION
How a managed program comes together
Agree the scope and responsibilities
Identify the systems you can authorize for testing, excluded activities, reward approach, and internal owners. Agree the management tasks, response expectations, escalation route, and reporting needs in the engagement.
Choose participation and prepare access
Select a private or public model and document the program policy. Prepare accounts, test data, monitoring contacts, and a route for urgent issues so researchers can work within clear boundaries.
Validate reports and establish impact
Hackrate reviews submissions and coordinates additional evidence where necessary. Your organization contributes product context and makes its risk and reward decisions using the validated findings and agreed program rules.
Remediate and improve the program
Your engineers implement fixes and coordinate verification through the agreed workflow. Review recurring weaknesses, scope changes, reporting quality, and budget use to guide the next stage of your program.
TWO DECISIONS. FOUR COMBINATIONS.
Who runs it.
Who takes part.
Managed and unmanaged describe operational responsibility. Private and public describe researcher participation. Choose one from each dimension to shape a program around your team.
A private program can be managed by Hackrate. A public program can be operated by your own team. Access controls and operating responsibilities should be agreed separately.
| Program model | Private | Public |
|---|---|---|
| ManagedProvider-led operations | Invited researchers. Managed coordination and validation. | Broader participation. Managed coordination and validation. |
| UnmanagedCustomer-led operations | Invited researchers. Your team runs the agreed workflow. | Broader participation. Your team runs the agreed workflow. |
Public participation does not automatically make vulnerability reports public. Disclosure follows the program’s agreed rules.
MAKE AN INFORMED START
Is managed bug bounty right for your organization?
A good fit when…
- You want external researcher insight while keeping internal engineers focused on remediation.
- Your team needs help validating submissions and maintaining researcher communication.
- You have an established product and want discovery to continue as it changes.
Have these foundations ready.
- A named owner can authorize scope, approve decisions, and coordinate internal teams.
- Engineering capacity exists to investigate and fix accepted vulnerabilities.
- Rewards, management support, and internal effort each have an agreed budget.
CLEAR OWNERSHIP. ACTIONABLE FINDINGS.
Clear ownership matters as much as report validation
Managed support reduces operational work, but it does not transfer ownership of your systems or security decisions. Hackrate handles the validation and coordination agreed for the program. Your organization approves testing authorization, provides product context, decides how to treat business risk, and implements remediation. Named contacts and an escalation path help both teams handle urgent findings without uncertainty about who can act.
The operating model should also cover duplicates, out-of-scope submissions, reward approval, disclosure requests, and verification of fixes. Agree which activities are included and how exceptions are handled before launch. The objective is a dependable process that researchers and engineers can follow, with enough documentation to understand a decision later. Additional testing or reporting requirements should be scoped explicitly rather than assumed.
PLAN THE FULL INVESTMENT
Plan the service budget and reward pool separately
A managed bug bounty budget includes more than researcher rewards. Separate the platform and management arrangement, the bounty pool for eligible findings, and the internal time required for decisions and fixes. Scope, participation, report volume, validation needs, and agreed support influence the overall engagement. Hackrate can discuss these factors with you before proposing an operating model.
Reward amounts and eligibility should be understandable before testing begins. Define severity considerations, exclusions, duplicate handling, and the approval process in the program rules. A private starting scope can help establish an operational baseline, but it does not guarantee a particular number of reports, a fixed research cost, or freedom from security incidents.
CUSTOMER STORIES
See how companies put
security testing to work.
Different products and priorities. A practical approach to understanding and addressing security risk.
Preparing for managed bug bounty.
Explore SEON’s approach to a prepared testing environment and researcher-driven security testing.
Read the SEON story
From a pentest to ongoing feedback.
See how XUND followed an initial PTaaS engagement with a private bug bounty program for its API.
Read the XUND story
Making testing activity visible.
Learn how Lensing used crowdsourced testing and HackGATE while preparing for its SOC 2 audit.
Read the Lensing storyYOUR QUESTIONS, ANSWERED
Managed Bug Bounty Programs FAQs.
Understand the model, the responsibilities, and the next step for your team.
Ask us a questionLooking for programs to join?
Browse the program catalog
What does Hackrate manage in a managed bug bounty program?
Hackrate provides report validation and researcher coordination through the agreed program workflow. Scope preparation, reporting, reward administration, verification, and other support should be defined in the engagement so responsibilities and service boundaries are clear before launch.
Can a managed bug bounty program be private?
Yes. Managed describes who operates the program; private describes who can participate. You can combine managed operations with invited researchers, or choose a public program when your scope, budget, and internal response capacity are ready for broader participation.
Does managed bug bounty replace penetration testing?
It serves a different purpose. A pentest has an agreed scope, testing period, methodology, and deliverables. Bug bounty encourages researcher-led discovery under program rules and rewards. Many organizations use a scoped assessment to establish a baseline and bug bounty to continue gathering independent findings.
Who fixes the vulnerabilities?
Your organization remains responsible for remediation and deployment decisions. Hackrate helps make reports understandable and coordinates the agreed reporting and verification workflow. Your engineers supply application context, implement changes, and determine how fixes move safely into production.
Are researchers allowed to test every system we own?
No. Authorization is limited to the assets and activities explicitly allowed by the program policy. Document third-party restrictions, excluded systems, prohibited actions, access conditions, and how researchers should handle an unexpected exposure or potentially disruptive test.
Are bounty rewards included in the management fee?
Do not assume they are. The commercial proposal should identify the management and platform arrangement, reward funding, and any additional agreed work separately. Your organization should also reserve internal capacity for triage decisions, engineering work, and incident escalation where needed.
How do we get started with Hackrate?
Start with the assets you want tested, your security objectives, existing testing work, and internal capacity. Hackrate can help discuss the participation model, reporting workflow, reward approach, and management responsibilities, then agree the scope and commercial terms for your program.
EXPLORE BUG BOUNTY PROGRAMS
Choose how your program works.
Decide who runs the program and who can take part. A managed program can be private or public.
OPERATING MODEL
Managed bug bounty
Hackrate coordinates researchers and validates reports so your team can focus on risk decisions and remediation.
You’re exploring this modelOPERATING MODEL
Unmanaged bug bounty
Understand the people, processes, and ongoing responsibilities behind a self-managed bug bounty program.
Explore Unmanaged bug bountyPARTICIPATION MODEL
Private bug bounty
Start with invited researchers, an agreed scope, and a controlled approach to researcher participation.
Explore Private bug bountyPARTICIPATION MODEL
Public bug bounty
Open defined assets to a broader researcher community with clear rules, rewards, and a prepared response team.
Explore Public bug bountyREADY TO EXPLORE YOUR OPTIONS?
Put a clear operating model behind your bug bounty.
Tell us what you want to test and where your team needs support. We will help shape a managed program with clear scope, responsibilities, and next steps.
Plan Your Managed Program
Hackrate
Our platform helps companies to identify software vulnerabilities in a cost-efficient way. It provides a secure and centralized view of ethical hacking projects for your company.
US Patent Applied for HackGATE #63/645,845
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