Microsoft paid out $13.6 million in bug bounties in the past 12 months

In the past year, Microsoft has awarded $13.6 million in total within its 17 bug bounty programs. The highest reward was two hundred thousand dollars. A year earlier, Microsoft paid out another hundred thousand dollars.

From July 1 last year to June 30, Microsoft paid out the converted 11.5 million euros. A total of 341 researchers received a sum of money. Together, these researchers submitted 1,261 vulnerability reports that were eligible for a monetary award. A year earlier there were fewer researchers; the average paid behavior has therefore probably fallen slightly. On average, each researcher received more than $10,000 per vulnerability, Microsoft says.

The largest amount was paid out under the Hyper-V bounty program. Microsoft also says it has introduced new “challenges and scenarios” this year for rewarding security research with the greatest impact on customers. That way, Microsoft can better discover problems that have the most impact on customers and researchers get higher rewards for their work, the company says.