Aug 07, 2016 12:40 AM EDT By Shunie Pearl C. Dela Cruz, UniversityHerald Reporter

Apple has finally announced to join the dozens of firm that offer payments to researchers who find critical bugs in their products. In their latest announcement during the BlackHat Security Conference last Thursday in Las Vegas, the tech giant confirmed that an award of $200,000 will be given to researchers who find security threats.

"Bug Bounty" program is popular among tech giants. This program encourages independent researches to join them in finding critical threats and security flaws to their products. Apple has been doing things differently. Before they signed-up for bug-bounty, the company was soliciting security problems report through a tipline but not giving any rewards or appreciation to the researcher.

A computer science professor at John Hopkins University, Matthew Green said in a report of NDTV that it was insult to the intelligence and effort of the researcher to not give rewards, pat in the back is not enough to comment someone for a job well-done.

Apple bug-bounty program will be different from other companies. Instead of opening the program to the public, Apple will be limiting the program to twenty four researchers to avoid low-quality and no value bug reports. As reported by Reuters, Rich Mogull, the Security Analyst said, "Fully open programs can definitely take a lot of resources to manage." However, he declined to say what firms and companies provided the advice.

Most tech giant companies such as AT&T Inc., Google, Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo Inc., and TESLA Motors are utilizing the Bug-Bounty program.

Microsoft has given a cash reward of $1.5 million to security researchers since it program launching three years ago with lowest payouts of $100,000 each. Facebook has also paid more than $4 million for five years as rewards for researchers in wide-range vulnerabilities. Just recently, Facebook has reported for giving $10,000 to Finland boy who is 10 years old for his discovery on how to delete comments from Instagram account.

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