CrowdCurity Raises $1 Million to Crowdsource Security for Bitcoin Startups

    For many hacked-together startups, security is an afterthought. But for bitcoin-related startups, and other companies where money is moving through their system, security is a make-it or break-it factor. There are plenty of white-hat security firms out there that will run some tests on your project, but you’re relying completely on one firm. To help startups run more of a bug-bounty program (like what Google and the other big companies do) and to make security more accessible, Denmark-founded Crowdcurity crowdsources these security tests and just announced it has raised $1 million.

    Leading the round was Tim Draper and Kima Ventures. And following were strategic investors Gerhard Eschelbeck, CTO and SVP of Sophos; Dr. Fengmin Gong, Cofounder and Chief Architect of Cyphort; and Mountain View-­based incubator 500Startups. Julie Cullivan, CIO of FireEye, will act as an advisor to the team.

    For pricing, CrowdCurity uses a method similar to 99designs, where you can give a basic tier of rewards, and a “super” tier of rewards for found bugs. Presumably the higher-quality researchers will stick to the Super tier, where they can make $2000 for a “high reward” or $500 for a “medium reward”.

    CrowdCurity says it undergoes a strict vetting process with Know Your Customer protocols when selecting security researches who get access to the bug bownty programs. Additionally the company integrates with developer tools like GitHub to simplify patching for its customers.

    Since we’ve last covered the company they’ve fleshed out their security researchers number, and have found a good niche with bitcoin startups. To date, CrowdCurity has a community of over 1,200 security researchers and has run 90 bug bounty programs.