Remember the human
Over the years, Bugcrowd has earned the trust of hackers and customers through our tireless commitment to values as simple as respect, honesty, accountability, and embracing the hacker mindset. These straightforward company standards define not only our operating principles but also our culture at Bugcrowd.
While we have always enforced consistent standards to the best of our ability, we recently decided that it was time to enhance our policies and provide you with clear, improved guidelines to help you better navigate our platform. Simply put, we’ve evolved.
It’s important to us that Bugcrowd’s enhanced model and the experiences we offer align with our values. Our goal is to bring a sense of community and belonging to every corner of our platform. Our aims around clarity and proactive action have been our North Star in designing our newly structured, and newly named, Platform Behavior Standards.
Whether you’re a uniquely skilled researcher or a security-seeking customer, we believe that all people should be afforded the right of finding our platform welcoming. Act respectfully, act with integrity, always have fun, and most importantly, remember the human on the other side.
Why you’re here
If you’ve made it to this point, you’ve likely experienced our platform one way or another. As we continue to evolve as an organization, we rely on interactions with, and feedback from you to learn how to adapt our behaviors in ways that benefit all parties. Maintaining a respectful, optimistic, fun culture for all involved is paramount at Bugcrowd, but make no mistake, toeing the line between good times and professional behavior can be tricky. Read on to learn a bit more about the core values we keep in mind to maintain a smooth balance.
Keep it simple
Don’t complicate that which can be made simple. At Bugcrowd, we strongly believe in playing by the rules built through a consensus agreement, understanding, and community among peers. We hope that a few of the top, core values we cherish at Bugcrowd shine through as our company’s source of guidance, which can be found in our newly enhanced Platform Behavior Standards:
- A deep respect for one another
- Consistently honest and ethical
- Full accountability
- Above all else, think like a hacker, and ridiculously happy customers will follow.
Let’s go deeper
A deep respect for one another
As members of a public platform, we’re responsible for showing appreciation and thoughtfulness in our daily interactions with each other. We’re committed to a working environment between Bugcrowd, researchers, and customers where everyone is afforded the dignity and respect they deserve. Inversely, this means we don’t tolerate misuse of the platform, treating others poorly or minimizing the value of anyone’s efforts.
Consistently honest and ethical
We work in accordance with our deepest values and routinely tap into our moral courage.
Remaining aware of the connection between our ethics and the actions we take allows Bugcrowd employees, researchers, and customers to benefit from work that is free from corruption, misuse, and division. Keeping honesty and ethics at the forefront of our platform decisions allows us to work with integrity toward our shared goals.
Full accountability
We seek to nurture leaders through clear boundaries and direct responsibility for our actions.
We view accountability as an integral part of the Bugcrowd culture. When we hold each other to common expectations, we build predictable pathways to success and a proactive atmosphere of responsibility.
Finally, think like a hacker, and ridiculously happy customers will follow
Stay focused, follow your curiosity, celebrate successes, and have fun! Bugcrowd is a place to network, learn, and tap into your interests, but who says we can’t have fun along the way? We believe in creating fun and embracing weirdness in everything we do. The natural passion you have for hacking will effortlessly curate ridiculously happy customers. It’s a win-win!
Structure ensures results
A strong foundation is critical to providing clear lanes of growth. Think of it like building a skyscraper. Solid foundation construction will allow us to build higher and withstand the tests of time. Building upon our foundation, we’ve added additional insight to our platform by specifying behavior standards.
User experience is at the forefront of everything we do. We anticipate this enhanced transparency will provide a comprehensible decision process for all adverse actions on the platform—a simple, honest solution to reduce confusion and improve your results.
At Bugcrowd‘s core is a vast network of researchers and customers. Our culture and practices are created, run, and inspired by you. We keep our core values at the center of all our decisions, and most importantly, we always remember the human on the other side.
Our enhanced Platform Behavior Standards
The Bugcrowd Platform is a safe space to interact with us, each other, and program owners. To maintain a strong foundation, we offer a space to freely share knowledge and create valuable networks. We achieve this by maintaining our core values while building a strong set of behavioral standards to offset offensive actions.
What you can expect from our improved Platform Behavior Standards is clear boundaries and fair treatment while still championing the personal, human touch that Bugcrowd is renowned for.
Visit our website for an in-depth look at the technicalities, but the basic principles are as simple as follows:
- Each researcher starts at 0 Behavior Points.
- As of Tuesday, September 28th, if an incident occurs resulting in an Enforcement Action, points are increased based on the severity.
- If you reach 5 Behavior Points, you are removed from the platform for a period of time.
- Note: Past incidents do not count retroactively against a researcher.
We hope this simple Platform Behavior Standards model will provide clarity around what you can expect moving forward. When we are able to predict outcomes, we’re more equipped to avoid the barriers hindering our limitless success.
Please visit our new and improved Code of Conduct to get a more in-depth look at the Platform Behavior Standards and the behaviors we are monitoring, along with their associated severity value and appropriate follow-up measures. For all platform updates and announcements, make sure you’re following us on Twitter and Discord.
