In universities across the world, students are getting hands-on training before they enter the job market. Medical students shadow doctors in hospitals, accessing real patients. Culinary students work in actual kitchens with fresh ingredients. By stepping beyond just study and theory, universities have the ability to make a real impact in the rapidly evolving world. And thanks to Bugcrowd, university security teams, students, and faculty are empowered to claim their place in the global security ecosystem, not as observers, but as contributors.
The Bugcrowd Academic Program delivers real-world engagement and cross-campus impact in a single partnership. It is designed to work across the full university ecosystem so everyone benefits from it. It has a direct impact on:
By partnering with The Bugcrowd Academic Program, universities improve security maturity, establish their academic relevance, improve student workforce development, and build community.
Let’s look at the three main parts of the campus security ecosystem that The Bugcrowd Academic Program impacts.
The Bugcrowd Academic Program gives security teams access to the Bugcrowd Platform to run live security programs, from VDPs to bug bounties to structured testing. These security programs connect with real researchers to test your assets and attack surface. These help teams strengthen campus security without the need for enterprise budgets.
Many universities across the world have benefited from working with Bugcrowd. Monash University, Australia’s largest university, experienced stellar results when they began prioritizing offensive testing through the security researcher community. According to their CISO, Dan Maslin, “Bugcrowd’s Vulnerability Disclosure Program is one of the best value-for-money services that we have. The annual cost of the program is the same cost of one traditional penetration test and the VDP has given us around a 100-fold increase in actionable intelligence.” You can learn more about Monash University’s journey with offensive security testing via Bugcrowd in the case study or in the customer webinar.
The Bugcrowd Academic Program provides curriculum enrichment through live content, integrating dynamic learning modules, challenge scenarios, and real vulnerability data sourced from Bugcrowd and active research communities. This gives faculty access to evolving, industry-sourced content and research support to modernize curricula and capstone projects. One of my favorite examples of this was with the Center for Long Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) at UC Berkeley. It was a lot of fun getting the student community involved in discovering and writing up findings during a recent EdTech event this past summer.
The Bugcrowd Academic Program identifies, enables, and supports student hackers and members of university security clubs in their ethical hacking journeys through hands-on educational opportunities. This is done through structured engagement with the researcher community, in the form of guest sessions, module support, and mentorship. For example, we bring leading industry hackers to universities to provide thoughtful guidance based on practical knowledge designed to jumpstart the careers and minds of the future. Bugcrowd recently hosted a hardware hacking session with the University of New Brunswick Cybersec Club, which you can read about on our blog.
The program helps students develop marketable, hands-on security skills while learning directly from industry professionals. They’ll be able to build a portfolio of real security findings as they gain access to Bugcrowd’s Platform and community.
By partnering with The Bugcrowd Academic Program, universities can shape how cybersecurity is discovered, taught, and advanced. Request a demo today to see how Bugcrowd can elevate cybersecurity at your university.