Microsoft paid out $ 11.6 million in bug bounty rewards last year

Microsoft paid out $ 11.6 million in bug bounty rewards in the past year. That is more than three times as many as in the previous year. The growth in rewards is partly due to new programs, a research grant and the corona pandemic.

In total, Microsoft distributed $ 13.7 million to security researchers from July 2019 to July 2020, the company writes. Converted to 11.6 million euros. In 2018, it was only 4.4 million dollars, or 3.7 million euros. That amount was divided among 327 researchers, who together reported 1,226 bugs through one of Microsoft’s 15 bugbounty programs.

Microsoft says the increase in bounties is due to a number of new programs the company created. For example, bugbounty programs were added for Azure, Edge and the Xbox. The company also released a number of research grants and programs. For example, a leaderboard was set up last year and a grant was released for researchers to look at Microsoft’s authentication methods.