Bug Bounty Vs. Penetration Testing

Many organizations test their systems to ensure secure business operations with various tools and methods. Bug bounty programs and Penetration testing are some of the best practices considered to find out the vulnerabilities in the system. This blog is curated with the differences between the Bug Bounty program vs. Penetration testing. But before that, what is the Bug bounty program, and what is the Penetration testing method?

Table of Contents

What is the Bug Bounty Program?
What is Penetration testing?
Differences between Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing
Scope of Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing
Advantages of Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing
Disadvantages of Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing
Cost of Bug Bounty program and Penetration Testing

What is the Bug Bounty Program?

Bug Bounty program is the deal offered by many websites, companies, and software developers through which the hackers and individuals can receive rewards for identifying vulnerabilities and bugs. They are flexible programs that can run continuously or for a set period and provide a community of dedicated, incentivized hackers to discover security vulnerabilities in the network.

What is Penetration testing?

Penetration testing, often known as pen testing, is a well-known and established form of testing carried out by organizations specializing in ethical hacking. It can be performed frequently, annually, or even more frequently as required. A pen test is necessary for events like organization acquisitions and upcoming product releases.

Differences between Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing

When it comes to bug bounties vs. penetration testing, the bounty hunter’s role is about identifying vulnerabilities. The hacker highlights the vulnerability and the possibility for exploitation and generates reports to the organization. If the bug is valid, the hacker gets a reward for the bounty based on the severity of the discovered vulnerability.

On the other hand, find vulnerabilities and record how a bug can exploit the system and how it can impact an organization’s compliance. The organization gets a report that elaborates the scope of the attack and relevant vulnerabilities with a penetration test. These reports include suggested actions for administrators to resolve the issue.

Scope of Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing

The Bug Bounty program is to perform tests on websites and online applications that are readily available to the public. That is why bug bounty schemes cannot discover website and web application vulnerabilities before they go live to the general public.

The client’s requirements determine the scope of Pen Testing. Internal testing, external testing, online application testing, embedded system testing, and many more forms of pen testing assessments.

Duration of the Test

The Bug Bounty program is used for continuous testing and is independent of the time frame. They help perform testing at regular intervals and ensure secure business operations. Whereas, Penetration testing is performed for a configured period based on the organization’s requirement.

Advantages of Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing

Bug Bounty program offers the following advantages:

• The Bug Bounty program includes various features that help find rare outputs that pentest cannot detect.
• It has flexible pricing that can fit the budget and requirements
• It is relatively cheaper than a penetration test
• It can allow a wide range of expertise and skilled testers
• It allows continuous testing

Penetration testing offers the following advantages:

• Pentest allows organizations to perform tests on specific aspects
• It provides extensible coverage by targeting and reporting the work.
• It is capable of revealing the hacker tricks that can exploit the system
• It highlights the areas in the application that are required to improve
• It allows the tester to perform tests on both internal and external systems

Disadvantages of Bug Bounty and Penetration Testing

Bug Bounty program offers the following disadvantages:

• The bug bounty program only identifies the vulnerabilities and does not perform any test further.
• Bug Bounty program is not used to prove compliance
• It offers less complexity compared with pentest
• It can perform tests only for websites and web applications that are online

Penetration testing offers the following disadvantages:

• Penetration testing process costs high compared to the Bug bounty program
• It provides only a snapshot of bugs found during the testing, which is not continuous.
• It depends on the scope and time of the project
• A small group of skilled testers can only perform pentest.

Cost of Bug Bounty program and Penetration Testing

The Bug Bounty program is cheaper than Penetration Testing, and the tester can receive rewards for successfully uncovering bugs in the application. On the other hand, the Penetration Testing process costs high depending on the nature of the software, scope, and network size.

Expertise

Professional testers carry out bug Bounty Programs, and also, any employee, irrespective of profession, with varied knowledge and experience can signup for the program to perform testing.

Whereas penetration testing can be performed by experienced hackers, who are qualified in cybersecurity having in-depth knowledge of technical, legal, and ethical aspects of testing.

With the rise of cybercrime, companies should enhance the efficiency of Bug Bounty programs and Penetration Testing, balancing the ability to find out vulnerabilities and in-depth testing of the application.

While implemented together, the Bug Bounty program and Penetration testing complement each other. It can provide a continuous testing program that eventually leads to an annual penetration test which ultimately ensures the security of internal and external applications.

Bug Bounty Training with InfosecTrain

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