Alex Rice

Alex Rice is a co-founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Information Security Officer of HackerOne, a San Francisco-based platform that connects organizations with security researchers for bug bounty programs and coordinated vulnerability disclosure. In his role, Rice is responsible for HackerOne's technology vision, engineering direction, and advising customers on building vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty programs.

Path to HackerOne

Before co-founding HackerOne, Rice built and led the product security team at Facebook. According to HackerOne's official biography, earlier in his career he was a senior member of the R&D team at an enterprise security company now known as Forcepoint, and before that he worked on software and network security improvements for the State of Florida. Specific dates for these earlier roles are not publicly documented.

Rice's path to founding HackerOne began through his work on Facebook's security team. Dutch researchers Jobert Abma and Michiel Prins had run an initiative called "Hack 100," testing the security of prominent websites, including Facebook, without prior authorization. Rice connected with them following that outreach, and the three—together with Merijn Terheggen—went on to establish HackerOne in 2012, aiming to formalize and legitimize the practice of independent researchers reporting vulnerabilities to companies for reward.

Building HackerOne

Since HackerOne's founding, Rice has overseen the platform's engineering and security architecture as it grew into one of the best-known names in the bug bounty and vulnerability-disclosure space. The company raised a $9 million Series A round from Benchmark in May 2014, and its platform went on to coordinate high-profile initiatives such as the U.S. Department of Defense's "Hack the Pentagon" program, launched in March 2016 as the federal government's first bug bounty initiative. By 2022, researchers on the HackerOne platform had reportedly been paid more than $230 million in bounties across its history.

Rice continues to serve as HackerOne's CTO and CISO, while fellow co-founders Michiel Prins and Jobert Abma have also remained connected to the company in product and advisory roles. Kara Sprague serves as HackerOne's CEO, per the company's current leadership listing.

Note: Detailed biographical specifics such as Rice's birthdate, education, and exact employment dates prior to Facebook are not documented in publicly available sources reviewed for this article and are marked as unknown rather than assumed.

Timeline

• 2011Alex Rice, then leading Facebook's product security efforts, connects with Dutch researchers Jobert Abma and Michiel Prins after their 'Hack 100' initiative surfaced vulnerabilities in Facebook and other major companies.
• 2012Rice co-founds HackerOne with Michiel Prins, Jobert Abma, and Merijn Terheggen.
• 2014-05HackerOne raises a $9 million Series A funding round led by Benchmark.
• 2016-03The U.S. Department of Defense launches 'Hack the Pentagon' on the HackerOne platform, the federal government's first bug bounty program.
• 2022-12HackerOne reports that researchers on its platform have been paid over $230 million in bounties cumulatively.