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CrowdCurity: A Danish Startup Focused On Increasing Security And Fighting Malicious Hackers

by Joseph Previte

Most of us probably don’t think twice before giving out personal information or credit card information on the web because we suppose it’s safe. We trust these large companies on the Internet because we assume they have security teams specifically employed to test bugs and close loopholes.

Most of them do; however, what about the new startups with few developers? How do we know if they’re safe? How are they preventing hackers from stealing our information?

Well, one Danish startup has come up with a solution to test the security of these smaller companies. They call themselves CrowdCurity.

CrowdCurity is a platform for simple and cost effective web app security testing. It is similar to the vulnerability reward programs, which companies like Google, Facebook and others have been running for the last few years.

"Basically, we're doing crowd-sourced vulnerability testing for small businesses and products. We want to take that and deliver that same concept to small businesses," said Christian Hansen, co-founder of Crowdcurity, in an interview with Artic Startup.

CrowdCurity built a platform where any company can easily run a crowd-sourced security test. The way it works is the company starts a vulnerability reward program and sets “reward budgets.” Then, security testers, or hackers, are invited to find bugs or holes within the website. Any valid bugs or vulnerabilities found are then passed on to the company and the testers receive monetary rewards based on the level of security breach of the bug.

This is similar to what Google did years ago with AdWords. You only pay per click - no clicks, no pay. Likewise, in CrowdCurity, you only pay if vulnerabilities are found - no vulnerabilities, no pay.

“We’ve already run a few crowd-sourced security tests and the testers uncovered vulnerabilities in otherwise secure web applications” added Jacob Hansen, Christian’s brother and the other co-founder of CrowdCurity.

The safeness of our information may be something many of us take for granted, but as the number of new companies that store our information on cloud services increases, it’s definitely something we should be mindful of.

Top Photo Courtesy: CrowdCurity