Authored by: Arjun Kolady, Security Solutions Engineer at HackerOne

Organisations are quickly scaling their digital business to adapt to today’s climate. In particular, HackerOne has observed 3 sectors that have seen a significant increase in the need for scaling their security programs due to current digital transformation trends. 

1. Financial Services
In Asia, digital banking is the future. Gone are the days where you have to go to a physical branch to get your banking needs taken care of, or head down to a physical store to make a purchase. With your smartphone and a few taps, you can get all those done in a jiffy. According to McKinsey, digital banking penetration has grown exponentially since 2014, standing at 97% on average for the developed Asia. Consumers are embracing digital banking for its convenience and ease of use, and adoption is expected to only increase as smartphone usage goes up.

2. Automotive Industry
With the evolution of smart technology, the automotive industry is another sector to look out for when it comes to digital transformation. Driven by consumer needs, cars are getting more connected than ever. Some examples include the connected infotainment systems, enabling of cloud storage, and driver assistance. While connected vehicles bring many perks and convenience to drivers, it also brings about concerns on road safety, and increased risks of security and data breach. According to BIS Research, the forecasted revenue for the automotive cybersecurity market is projected to reach US$6.03 billion by 2029 from US$1.26 billion in 2018. 

3. Healthcare Sector
In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a growing trend in online medical consultation services, where a patient gets access to a doctor remotely. This is made possible through online communication tools like a smartphone, a mobile application or its equivalent. Tele-consultation has revolutionised the digital healthcare scene, and seen as a reliable and easy way to get medical advice and treatment. However, this also means that access to patient’s private and sensitive data like patient records, and personal identifiable data needs to be available on-demand. 

Now, we can all agree that digital transformation is necessary, but it is also putting companies at increased risk. Responsible businesses understand that they and the business they manage are under constant attack and will be for the foreseeable future. Companies need to adopt a security strategy that can grow and adapt with their pace of innovation, and digital transformation initiatives.

How?
The only way to keep up is to secure your ever-evolving attack surface. Existing security solutions just cannot keep up with the pace of digital transformation. With hacker-powered security, you can maintain application integrity across cloud environments, consolidate security tools, and shrink complexity and costs. Most importantly, hacker-powered security reduces your organisation’s exposure to risk and scales your resources without the overhead.

There are 3 different ways Hacker-Powered Security can help your organisation:

Vulnerability Disclosure programs
A Vulnerability Disclosure Program (VDP) is the first step to protect your company from an attack or premature vulnerability release to the public. It is a method for organisations to publish a process that informs people outside of your organisation on what to do when they discover a potential security vulnerability. This is now considered a best practice and a regulatory expectation. We are seeing vulnerability coordination getting required for compliance in certain industries with automotive and healthcare coming out of frontrunners.

A VDP also serves as a channel for hackers and security researchers to reach out directly and inform you of a vulnerability they found, with clear guidelines for reporting security vulnerabilities to the person or team responsible.

Hacker-Powered Pentests
Traditional pentests take time to schedule and receive the actual vulnerabilities found during the test process, but a hacker-powered pentests is a little more transparent in model, and allows for a faster speed to delivery. Security and development teams are able to track any immediate vulnerabilities as they are found, with real time project updates through integration with Slack or similar tools. 

Hacker-powered pentests bolsters your existing security efforts with advanced vetting, given the most risk-averse organisations like financial services, the confidence to bring trusted security researchers into their programs. Hacker-powered pentests also comply with regulations, standards and audit-based requirements. 

Bug Bounty Programs (BBP)
Secure your applications with continuous testing by partnering with ethical hackers from all over the world. This is an extension from vulnerability disclosure program, but this time you’re taking it to another level by actively incentivising the largest community of hackers to perform continuous security research on your products, offering cash rewards for valid vulnerabilities in a pay for results model.

With Hacker-Powered Security, trusted hackers become an extension of your security team to protect against data breaches, reduce cybercrime, protect privacy, and restore trust in our digital society. They can help you strengthen your security posture and reduce your company’s risk of security vulnerabilities as you scale in the era of digital transformation.