Start a New Business — As a Hacker?

Hackers sometimes get a bad rap. But if you have the skills to be a hacker, you could actually turn it into a business opportunity.

Hacker for Hire

That’s what Mark Litchfield and others have done as part of hacking groups like HackerOne. Companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Uber have hired these companies to try to break into their systems — and offered sizable rewards for doing so.

The idea is that if your hackers can find weaknesses in your system, those with less than honorable intentions will probably be able to find them too. So when these hackers identify vulnerabilities, the companies can go in and make fixes to ensure their customer data and any other sensitive material is secure. Hackers who found the vulnerability are then rewarded with payouts ranging anywhere from $500 to $15,000.

Companies like Uber have paid more than a million dollars in awards to hackers who have helped them identify areas of weakness. So these bug bounty programs are not necessarily a viable route for small businesses to use on a large scale at this time. But you could potentially organize something similar on a smaller scale.

And for entrepreneurs who are skilled with things like computer programming and software development, earning money and building a business as a hacker for hire is becoming an extremely viable opportunity.

Hacker Photo via Shutterstock

This article, "Start a New Business — As a Hacker?" was first published on Small Business Trends