Microsoft Bounty Program Updates: Faster bounty review, faster payments, and higher rewards In 2018 The Microsoft Bounty Program awarded over $2,000,000 to encourage and reward external security research in key technologies to protect our customers. Building on that success, we are excited to announce a number of improvements in our bounty programs to better serve the security research community. Faster bounty review – As of January 2019, the Cloud, Windows, and Azure DevOps programs now award bounties upon completion of reproduction and assessment of each submission, rather than waiting until the final fix has been determined. Shortening the time from submission to award determination is just one way we will get bounty rewards to researchers faster. Faster bounty payments, with more payment options – Once a vulnerability submission has successfully qualified for bounty award, we want to ensure payments happen [ more… ]