Stephanie Sum
Submitted by Stephanie Sum on

Dragoneer Investment Group Leads Series C with Participation from NEA, Benchmark and Strategic Investors

SAN FRANCISCO--February 8, 2017 --HackerOne, the leading bug bounty and vulnerability disclosure platform, today announced $40 million in Series C financing. With unprecedented business growth in 2016 creating intense investor interest, the round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, a long-term oriented investment firm that is focused on backing exceptional businesses including: Airbnb, Atlassian, New Relic and Uber. The company will use the new funds to invest further in technology development, expand market reach, and continue to strengthen the world’s largest and most diverse hacker community.

HackerOne is the most widely adopted bug bounty platform in the world with more than 100,000 hackers. Bug bounty programs allow software-powered organizations to identify severe vulnerabilities in live systems fast, and at a fraction of the traditional cost. As the average cost of a breach in the U.S. has grown to $7 million, more than 38,000 security vulnerabilities have been resolved across more than 700 HackerOne customers. As a result, hackers earn more on HackerOne than anywhere else with over $14 million in bug bounties awarded -- $7 million of which was awarded in 2016.

In 2016, HackerOne was hand-picked by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to run the U.S. federal government's first bug bounty challenge, Hack the Pentagon, which vastly exceeded expectations and resolved more than 138 vulnerabilities discovered by 1,400 hackers, saving the DoD over $1 million compared to previous methods. As a result of the success, HackerOne was awarded a $3 million contractfrom the DoD to Hack the U.S. Army, a program which saw the first hacker report filed within 5 minutes of launching. Industry leaders across government, healthcare, technology, retail, automotive, gaming and travel trust HackerOne. Customers include Airbnb, CloudFlare, General Motors, GitHub, New Relic, Nintendo, Qualcomm, Starbucks and Uber; all of which rely on HackerOne for the creativity and intelligence of the world’s largest hacker community, and its ease of use, from self-service to best-in-class managed services. With zero commitment offerings for startups and open source projects, HackerOne makes it easy for every organization connected to the internet to improve their security with help from hackers.

“HackerOne is at the forefront of the burgeoning bug bounty movement. Through its impressive and growing customer list, it has proven to be the most sophisticated platform on the market with tremendous potential ahead,” said Marc Stad, Founder and Managing Partner of Dragoneer Investment Group. “Hackers love it because companies on HackerOne pay the highest bounties in the industry, and businesses love it because it provides access to the most diverse hacker community in the world. It is borderline silly for a company not to utilize a bug bounty platform given the immediate reduction in security vulnerabilities and the relatively low price point compared to other security options.”

“Together we hit harder and the results speak for themselves. Our customers typically receive their first valid security vulnerability report the same day they challenge our diverse community of hackers to examine their code,” said Marten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne. “There’s no such thing as perfect software and bug bounty programs are the most efficient and cost-effective solution for finding security vulnerabilities in live software. With support from Dragoneer we are in the best position to rapidly scale and empower the world to build a safer internet.”