Crowdsourcing Security - Opportunities and Challenges

With improved digital literacy and cheaper data connections, crowdsourcing has become more prevalent. Crowdsourcing tasks such as image tagging, language translation, etc. have contributors with varied skill level. Question and answers, software development/testing and product design are more serious tasks and require expert contributions. With increasing security threats, crowdsourcing in 'security' domain is seen as an upcoming trend. In the survey, opportunities and challenges in crowdsourcing security are analyzed based on a survey conducted with 229 participants. The results provide insights on motivation, quality mechanisms and improvement areas for increased participation. 'Question and Answers' that includes information sharing and 'software development and testing' that includes Bug Bounty are identified as top crowdsourcing tasks by security specialists although they are concerned about security and privacy of information. Among quality attributes analyzed, contributor 'credibility' is identified as a key area of improvement for increased participation in crowdsourcing.