News Insights: Swiss government offers reward for hacking its electronic vote system

News Insights:

According, Casey Ellis, CTO and founder of Bugcrowd, a crowdsourced security company, “The Swiss government’s announcement of a new bug bounty program offering a reward to hackers who can break into its new electronic voting system is a great move toward increased election security. The power of hacking for good has driven the rapid rise of vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty programs, and resulted in a radically safer and more trustworthy internet. That trust is critical for our election systems and democratic institutions, which will undoubtedly continue to be the target of bad actors as we approach the 2020 election.”

He added, “We’ve been happy to see bug bounty efforts start to take hold in the federal government and encourage more efforts like DoD’s Hack the Pentagon program. Switzerland’s efforts should serve as an example to the U.S. government, and we encourage more countries to follow their lead. I look forward to seeing the success of the program, and how the findings are expanded to ensure other parts of the government are secure.”