👉What Is Ethical Hacking?
Ethical hacking is the act of
legally intruding into a system or network to detect its weaknesses and
vulnerabilities. The practice helps the organisations to make sure that before
an actual hacker enters and exploits their network, the database, the
vulnerabilities are detected and dealt with within the organization.
Ethical hacking is basically testing
the network and understanding the scope for improvement in it. Ethical hackers
may or may not use the exact same techniques, tools, and measures used by
attackers.
What differentiates them is that
they have approvals from respective stakeholders and steering committee that
allows them to enter the network, scan, detect, do the gap analysis and report
all the vulnerabilities from a specifically designed LAB so that the organisation
could strengthen their security measures.
👉Why Is Ethical Hacking Needed?
Whether it is e-commerce,
healthcare, defense, government, banking and financial sector or any other
sector, the requirement of ethical hacking is growing more than ever due to the
risk of data theft. Had ethical hacking not been there, all the users’ data
including passwords, credit card details, social security numbers, or sensitive
corporate data could be easily stolen by malicious attackers which will results
in huge financial losses to companies.
Companies in every sector are
dealing with enormous cyberattacks either done by competitor organisations or
individuals involved in cybercrimes. To stand against such negative agents and
to ensure data safety, organisations need hackers who can break into their web
applications, devices, server, network, etc., and can create a protective
shield.
To maintain the trust of the clients
and secure user data, organisations deploy complex security technologies
through ethical hacking that cannot be broken by attackers.
👉When Do Organisations Need Ethical Hackers?
Organisations look up to ethical hackers when they want
someone to use the general information of the company found online and try to
penetrate into the system.
Last week, the database of one of
the most popular food delivery apps in India was hacked. The hacker accessed
major details of 17 million users including the names, user names, numeric user
IDs, email, and password hashes.
These
details were then put up on the darknet for sale without even considering a
negotiation with the organisation. Such incidents could create a situation of
panic as a lot of users generally keep the same password on their social media
accounts, mobile applications, and even for mails.
Organisations need ethical hacking
services all the time. Whether it is launching a new product, expanding the
current product line, or branching out the business, companies have to keep on
evaluating and improving their security measures to keep the user data secured.
During an ongoing attack, ethical
hackers play a key role as they track the issue faster to stop it as soon as
possible and reduce the organisations’ liability.
Organisations look up to ethical
hackers when they want someone to use the general information of the company
found online and try to penetrate into the system. They want the ethical
hackers to imitate attacks that could be done by malicious hackers, try to
enter in the wireless system of the company, test routers, firewalls, and
switches, and intrude into the company’s website and app to detect
vulnerabilities before attackers could reach this stage.
👍Where Is The Need For Ethical Hacking Felt: Career Opportunities For
Ethical Hackers
Approximately, every industry today
has some or all of its operations taking place online leading to growth in the
requirement of ethical hackers. Some of the most prominent places where ethical
hackers can work in different roles such as chief information security officer,
information security analyst, ethical hacking trainer, network security
administrator, and chief application security officer, include –
- Government (non-defense and defense) – The government, policymaker of every country, contains a huge amount of sensitive data of each of its citizens and residents. Details about infantry weapons, missile systems, aircraft, radar, etc., and plans to deploy these in the situation of a national emergency is extremely confidential. The government needs ethical hackers to secure all this data and avoid unwanted intrusions. Within the government, ethical hackers could work in departments such as forensic, law, or investigative.
- Banking and finance – Public funds are extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks. To deploy robust security measures on all financial services such as debit and credit cards, online banking, mobile banking, foreign currency exchange, accepting deposits, and advancing of loans, banks need professional ethical hackers. They help the banks in the implementation of advanced security measures to secure every transaction and user details.
- Healthcare – In the number of cyber-crimes taking place in pharmaceutical companies, India stands at the 6th position with various healthcare machines, equipment, and devices at stake. Nothing is more important for an economy than providing effective healthcare services to its people and keeping their information safe. Ethical hackers help the healthcare industry in securing their research results, latest medical formulas, and other sensitive details.
- Professional
consulting firms – A community of ethical hackers could work independently and
can form professional consultancies to provide companies with the required
knowledge about ethical hacking. Organisations which do not hire ethical
hackers, choose such services to get their networks scanned and issues
reported. Hackers understand every organisation’s products and keep them
informed about the latest practices in the cybersecurity world to avoid
malicious risks.
🙋Who Can Do Ethical Hacking?
To perform ethical hacking, an individual
must be aware of the latest technology and security concepts used in various
sectors such as education, healthcare, e-commerce, automobile, and
biotechnology. Ethical hackers are skilled individuals who are provided with
access to a network by authorities to detect and report vulnerabilities in the
system.
The
individual must have basic computer and networking skills, programming skills
with a good understanding of Linux, cryptography, database management systems
(DBMS), and social engineering.
On a regular basis, ethical hackers
have to build and develop their understanding of password guessing and
cracking, network traffic sniffing, session spoofing and hijacking, exploiting
buffer overflow vulnerabilities, denial of service attacks, SQL injection, and
a lot more. Someone with all of these skills, a passion to pursue a career in
cybersecurity, patience and persistence, and ability to upgrade her/his set of hacking skills with growing technology,
can perform ethical hacking for organisations.
🙋How Can One Learn Ethical Hacking?
Ethical hacking has turned into one
of the most in-demand skills lately. Learning ethical hacking can be affordably
done through online training. Online training comes with an array of benefits
including the liberty of learning anytime from the comfort of your homes.
Breakdown of the overall course into different modules accompanied by various
exercises, quizzes, assessment tests, and code challenges makes the learning
process stress-free, engaging, and interesting. Even a beginner with little understanding
of programming can make a career in this field.
After enrolling in an online ethical
hacking training, you learn the basics of information security and computer
networking. You also understand the concept of information gathering and basics
of web development while getting an introduction to web VAPT, OWASP, and SQL
injections. You learn about advanced web application attacks and how to perform
client-side attacks.
You become proficient in identifying
security misconfigurations and exploiting outdated web applications, VAPT and
secure code development, and documenting and reporting vulnerabilities. The
online training also features a real-world project where training batches will utilise tools and techniques used by hackers
to find weaknesses in an e-commerce website, which strengthens your practical
understanding of everything that learn in the training.
Conclusion
To draw the curtain for this
article, would like to say ethical hacking should not be considered as criminal
activity. While it is true that malicious hacking takes place to harm any
individual or mass is treated as cyber-crime but ethical hacking is never a
crime. Ethical hacking is in line with industry regulation and organizational
IT policies. Malicious hacking should be prevented while ethical hacking which
promotes research, innovation, and technological breakthroughs should be
encouraged and allowed.
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