The Ethical Hacking Guide for Beginners: Fight the Crime Right Away
Ethical hacking also known as penetration testing refers to the act of intruding or penetrating multiple IT systems and networks to explore hidden vulnerabilities and other possible points of the breach. The ones that can be used and exploited by an illicit hacker to gain access to these sensitive systems. After gaining access these hackers can use the information causing loss of important data, financial losses associated with the data, and other major damages from where the chances of rebounding to control the ramifications start to shrink.
Job roles and responsibilities of an ethical hacker
Being a certified ethical hacker you would have to convene yourself onto a dynamic array of responsibilities, some of them require a good practice over your professional skills while others not so much. The first and foremost duty that these professionals have to fulfill is that they should have a decent grip over their communication skills and how they do perceive and handle the discussion with their colleagues and the rest of the group. What good is a professional if they can’t communicate their way through a clumsy audience?
That is why having a strong notion of communicative and collaborative skills is a must-have for this job and what the normal version of job responsibilities for this job entails. Now moving onto the other technical abilities that an ethical hacker must have; you must know all about designing and implementing calculated attacks and penetration environments for checking the security of the systems.
Apart from designing the security detail of an organization these professionals are hired on short-term projects and by the companies perform various testing and penetration related chores. Penetration testing has taken the world of IT from the throat because in order to launch a new product, app, or software you would first have to make sure that all the components are working fine and there are no chances of breach or vulnerability whatsoever. Ethical hackers are also tasked with providing their advice and recommendation with the dedicated companies on matters of serious security concerns.
It is although true that professional aptitude comes first for any job but there are other certain things you shouldn’t leave the sight of while charging to get ahold of a dedicated job. The same thing applies for the job of an ethical hacker, you should have at least a five-year experience working as the penetration tester or networking engineer for a company to be able to become eligible for the job of an ethical hacker. Apart from this, you must have your bachelors completed in computer science and effective knowledge of various programming languages.
Types of ethical hackers
As it goes there are three different types of ethical hackers, the overall actions that they take are the same and the only difference between these is of their will and sides they have chosen to reside with. So, starting off first of all we have;
- Black hat hackers
As clear from the name the ultimate goal of these types of hackers is to gain unauthorized access into the security of the organization and then steal the valuable data from the networking systems. These would either use a single or series of different attacks that collectively combines into a cyber-breach to hurt the potential security of the website or organization they are striving against. The intent of these illicit criminals is to hurt the institution one way or the other.
These might have a few political gains or other personal goals in mind that might be fueling them to get on with these series of unforgivable events. They steal anything that might brush out as beneficial to them and leave the rest where these were.
Read more: Types of Ethical Hacking
- White hat hackers
Ethical or white hat hackers use their dedicated knowledge for the sake of designing various testing systems that they can work around with. These testing systems have various algorithms put into a single executable file that runs a series of short cyber-attacks meant to disarm the security of the network, of the apps and services that are protecting the networking systems and the data behind it from the same cyber-attacks.
If a system gives in and fails to tackle the engineered attack then it is the responsibility of these professionals to build customized security systems and modifications within the failing surety definitions.
- Grey hat hackers
These can be perceived as the mix of both white and black hat hackers. They can exploit a security detail just for the fun of it, trying to prove their skills to whoever watching them out there. They might enter a highly secured networking system and then leave without interfering with a single fragment of data, the final intent of these hackers can't be predicted.
It is advised that you complete your cybersecurity certification if you want to work as a cybersecurity professional, enjoying a high paying job and added luxuries that come along with it.
Connect with our experts and learn more on how you can become an ethical hacker to enjoy one of the highly reputed jobs in the US.