Case Study: GitHub achieves an automated, streamlined bug bounty program and phenomenal ROI with HackerOne

How hacker-powered security illuminated GitHub’s security blind spots, resulted in an ROI of “phenomenal,” and became a permanent part of their security program

GitHub, home to over 20 million developers and 55 million projects, needed a scalable way to find and fix vulnerabilities across a massive, constantly changing platform. Their early, highly manual bug bounty process was time-consuming, fragmented, and left security blind spots that traditional assessments and red teams didn’t catch.

After transitioning to HackerOne and automating workflows via the API, GitHub streamlined triage (reducing a ~20-step checklist to 4), improved communications and payouts, and made the bounty program a permanent part of their security strategy. The program yielded 795+ reports, $125,000 in bounties (top award $12,000), faster bug discovery, and what GitHub calls a “phenomenal” ROI.

GitHub

Neil Matatall

Security Engineer