After winning over the U.S. Department of Defense and numerous other high-profile customers in 2016, HackerOne Inc. is hoping to continue its momentum this year.

The security startup today announced it has closed a $40 million in funding led by Dragoneer Investment Group. It was joined by existing backers New Enterprise Associates, Benchmark and several other unnamed contributors. HackerOne Chief Executive Mårten Mickos told TechCrunch that his firm wasn’t in need of new capital before the round, but received so much investor interest that the decision was made to seize upon the opportunity.

The reason why the venture capital community is so enthusiastic about the startup lies with its cloud-based bug bounty platform. Known as Security@, the service provides access to a community of over 100,000 vulnerability assessment professionals that organizations can ask to look for weaknesses in their technology infrastructure. Relevant discoveries are rewarded with financial prizes ranging from $100 to as much as $50,000 depending on the severity of the exploit.

According to HackerOne, everything is organized in a neat inbox that enable an organization’s network protection staff to quickly find out when new flaws are reported. From there, the administrator on call can quickly check the history of the user who discovered the vulnerability, ensure that it’s not a duplicate submission and escalate the bug to the appropriate superior for approval.

Alternatively, an organization can have HackerOne handle the process on its behalf and present their internal security personnel with curated reports. The startup’s goal is to help companies identify vulnerabilities that may normally slip under the radar due to personnel shortages. Fewer unaddressed exploits in turn lowers the risk of hacking.

To drive the point home, HackerOne highlights on its website how DoD used @Secure to collect 1,189 vulnerability reports in just three weeks. The department’s widely-covered Hack the Pentagon program proved particularly successful, having produced estimated security savings of about $1 million at the cost of just $150,000.

Today’s funding will enable HackerOne to broaden the appeal of its platform even further. Mickos said that the effort will among others focus on developing artificial intelligence capabilities for filtering irrelevant submissions. The startup will also work to grow its customer base, which currently includes about 800 organizations besides the DoD, including Twitter Inc. and General Motors Co.

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