Vulnerability disclosure platform HackerOne has secured $9 million in a Series A round of funding, and has appointed Katie Moussouris, former senior security strategist lead at Microsoft, as the company’s chief policy officer.
As chief policy officer, Moussouris will be responsible for the company’s vulnerability disclosure philosophy, and she’ll work to promote and legitimize security research among organizations, legislators and policy makers, HackerOne has revealed.
At Microsoft, Moussouris led the Security Community Outreach and Strategy team responsible for the company’s bounty programs and the BlueHat conference. Microsoft’s Vulnerability Research program was also founded by Moussouris.
HackerOne was founded by Alex Rice, the company’s CTO and the man behind Facebook’s bug bounty program, and Merijn Terheggen, who has been named CEO. HackerOne became known in November 2013 when it announced hosting the Internet Bug Bounty project funded by Microsoft and Facebook. The project’s goal has been to make the Internet safer by offering cash rewards to security researchers who discover vulnerabilities in popular software applications.
The funding round was led by early stage venture capital firm, Benchmark Capital. Benchmark General Partner Bill Gurley and Lookout Mobile Security Founder John Hering have joined the HackerOne board of directors.
“This is a fascinating company with an innovative solution to an increasingly critical problem. Moreover, the vibrancy we see in the HackerOne community is quite similar to what we have seen with other community/marketplaces we have backed including ebay, Yelp, OpenTable, Zillow and Uber,” Gurley wrote on his blog.
“HackerOne is a true win-win, researchers are rewarded for their unique skills, and companies are able to identify vulnerabilities in a way that limits repercussions for their users,” Gurley noted.
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
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