Platform Collaboration in 5 Easy Steps

Imagine you’ve been invited to a party where you don’t know anyone. Scary, right? Now imagine it’s one of those parties where you have to play partnered or even group games. I don’t know about you, but that situation makes us shake in our tattered, black Chucks. We never want you to feel like that on our platform so we have launched our Researcher Collaboration feature!

At Bugcrowd, security researchers are at the heart of our organization. We take great pride in informing and involving you in all aspects of our process. That’s why we ask for feedback and love hearing the crowd return with awesome ideas like this. 

One of the most asked for features was researcher collaboration on programs. Working with your mates is great, but we also heard you when you expressed concern about privacy and spam via unwanted collaboration requests. We’re proud to say, we believe we delivered. 

The difference lies in the details 

Whoever said “two heads are better than one”, had the right idea. You can expect collaboration with your fellow researchers and friends to lead to increased creativity, increased innovation and a whole lotta opportunity to learn and improve your craft. Some of these bugs can be really tricky to nail down, but problem-solving with your collaboration crew will leave everyone feeling productive and successful. Everything from hunting to writing reports will become easier and more fun when you work as a group. So pool your knowledge together, bounce ideas off each other and build lasting relationships. After all, teamwork makes the dream work. 

5 steps to a quick and painless setup 

We promise you’ll be buzzing around with other researchers in no time. Follow these 5 easy steps to set-up and you’ll be ready to go:

Step1: Login 

Step 2: Click the “Account Settings” tab

Step 3: Follow that to the “Friends” tab

Step 4: Choose your own adventure! Take a moment to sort out whether you want “Anyone” to be able to add you on a public or private program, or if you only want your chosen friends to be able to add you. This will allow you to control the level of “spam” typically associated with features like this. 

Note: Blocked researchers will always be excluded to protect you from spam.

Step 5: Lastly, search programs. Find a program you want to collaborate on and navigate down to the “Add a Collaborator” button. Choose your mates, choose the split, and you’re all set! 

Stop, Collaborate and Listen

What do you call a collaboration on Twitch? Give up? Ok ok, we’ll tell you… Crossing the Streams   Jokes aside, there are a few interesting things you should know about this enhanced feature:

• It’s a unilateral relationship between you and other researchers, meaning that you both have to independently add each other. Think, less like Facebook friends and more like Twitter followers. 
• Once both parties have added each other, you can now add each other on submissions 
• Collaboration will not be enabled on VDPs. VDPs are a “see something, say something” kinda deal, so collaboration doesn’t really fit the bill. 
• To collaborate on a private program, both researchers have to be invited to that program AND both researchers have to add each other as collaborators. 

*2022 update*

You can now easily find programs that your friends (or potential friends) are working on and collaborate with them! This will give you the opportunity to reach out and join forces! There are two places you can spot your buds: on the program brief page and on the submission page.

We are so excited to roll out this fun, new feature for you. It’s no secret that we can all benefit from sharing knowledge and perspective. How else do we grow as people and professionals if not through our admired peers? We hope you enjoy working with your pals on the variety of challenging programs we have available. Our team loves to hear your thoughts and experiences, so don’t be shy! Share your experiences on Twitter or write to us directly. Happy hunting!