Request a Demo

Cobalt vs Bug Bounty Providers

The modern alternative to bug bounty programs

While bug bounties provide crowdsourced security testing, they lack the depth and coverage needed to detect the most critical system vulnerabilities. Stop wasting time and money on bug submissions, and get real risk reduction with Cobalt.

outpace-threats-hero

The Cobalt Differentiators

While having a bug bounty program is considered best practice as part of a broader offensive security program, the results from these engagements are often unpredictable. As more practitioners start to disregard these low-quality bug submissions – now being termed “AI slop” — the impact of these programs is diminishing. While the pricing model and the idea of thousands of testers finding issues is appealing, the value of bug bounty programs isn’t meeting expectations.

Some challenges with bug findings:

  • The vast majority of crowd-submitted bugs to bug bounty companies are not actual vulnerabilities.
  • Very few submitted bugs have enough information attached to make a determination about the nature or severity of the bug.
  • Only a small handful of professional bug hunters are diligent in providing useful writeups of their bugs.
  • Proving a bug is a security vulnerability requires proof of exploit, which isn’t always easy to do.
  • The unpredictability of findings means you can’t predict what to budget for bug bounties.

The Cobalt PTaaS Difference

In contrast to a bug bounty style engagement, a human-led pentest program from Cobalt focuses on pairing you with expert testers who have experience dealing with your specific applications and technology stack. Instead of hundreds of testers who may only test for one thing, we pair you with a handful of dedicated testers from our highly-vetted community. They use robust methodologies, standardized checklists, and years of experience when checking every nook and cranny of your applications, providing quality, actionable results that won’t get ignored. 

  Cobalt PTaaS Bug Bounty
Speed of kicking off an engagement
Robust Methodologies
Dedicated Testers
Tester vetting Sometimes
Predictable timelines for findings
High-quality findings
Cost-effective offensive security testing
Real time communication with testers
Know your testing team
Integrated delivery model for findings
Free Restesting to validate fixes
Focus on customer experience
Customizable reporting for compliance
Insurity-Logo-customer-card
Adam Davis,
Director of Application Security at Insurity
“Some of the issues that come back are phenomenal, things I’d never think of. We’re talking chained exploits and complex business logic issues that we could never find internally ourselves. The Cobalt pentesters go deep and find vulnerabilities that a real hacker in the wild could exploit.”
customer stories
powerschool-logo
Mishka McCowan,
Chief Information Security Officer at PowerSchool

“There is a lot of snake oil out there. We loved that Cobalt was the real thing and actually knew what they were talking about. They were the first pentesting solution that presented us with a clear methodology on AI and LLM applications.”

Customer Stories

Move Beyond the Checklist Mentality.

Stop reacting to threats and start building a sustainable, proactive offensive security program with Cobalt PTaaS.

Cobalt_homepage_cta_image@2x-1