The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has agreed on a contract with ethical hacker company HackerOne to help reduce its cyber risk.
Under a £2.5 million, 18-month contract that began at the end of October, the company will support activities including bug bounty challenges – also known as vulnerability rewards programmes – under which ethical hackers can receive rewards for disclosing bugs or vulnerabilities in a system.
It also involves a vulnerability disclosure programme for the MoD’s supply chain.
HackerOne provides a platform that brings together a global community of ethical hackers to work on tailored security objectives and help to eliminate vulnerabilities in a client’s network. It draws on a database of vulnerability trends and its services include the organisation of bug bounties and vulnerability disclosure programmes.
It has worked previously with the MoD, running the ministry’s first bug bounty challenge in 2021.
The MoD was recently branded as having the weakest cyber security in UK central government, with 11 of its systems being red rated for risk, according to a report The Telegraph.
