In the Integrated Review published earlier this year,
the government committed to a more robust position on
security and resilience, ensuring that lives and
livelihoods are protected from those who may wish to
do us harm. This challenge is part of wider plans to
ensure transparency and collaborate with partners to
improve national security.
MOD will continue to make use of the Bug Bounty
expertise, in addition to other capabilities
available to ensure cyber security and resilience.
MOD cyber security efforts reinforce the UK
Government strategy for cross-department resilience
and security, lessons learned by Defence are shared
with partners.
Minister for the Armed Forces
said:
Bug bounty is an exciting new capability for the
Ministry of Defence. Our cyber teams are
collaborating with the ethical hacking community to
identify and fix vulnerabilities in our systems,
ensuring we’re more resilient and better protected.
This work will contribute to better cyber and
information security for the UK.
Participants praised Defence for its openness and
willingness to embrace new tools and capabilities to
secure cyber systems. Programmes like this are
industry best practice and used by governments and
organisations across the world to defend against
possible cyber-attacks.
Christine Maxwell, Ministry of Defence Chief
Information Security Officer said:
The Ministry of Defence has embraced a strategy of
securing by design, with transparency being
integral for identifying areas for improvement in
the development process.
It is important for us to continue to push the
boundaries with our digital and cyber development
to attract personnel with skills, energy and
commitment. Working with the ethical hacking
community allows us to build out our bench of tech
talent and bring more diverse perspectives to
protect and defend our assets. Understanding where
our vulnerabilities are and working with the wider
ethical hacking community to identify and fix them
is an essential step in reducing cyber risk and
improving resilience.
CEO of HackerOne, Marten Mickos said:
Governments worldwide are waking up to the fact
that they can’t secure their immense digital
environments with traditional security tools
anymore.
Having a formalised process to accept
vulnerabilities from third parties is widely
considered best practice globally, with the U.S
government making it mandatory for their federal
civilian agencies this year. The U.K MoD is leading
the way in the U.K government with forward-thinking
and collaborative solutions to securing its digital
assets and I predict we will see more government
agencies follow its example.
