Gone are the days when anyone who could hack was considered untrustworthy or a criminal. Today there are official ethical hacking training that train people in the art of ethical hacking and provide them with a reputable certification to practice hacking for a living.
Ethical hacking is a common phenomenon today that is practiced by many businesses to safeguard their digital resources. You must’ve heard about it from your peers or seen it in some movies as well. Ethical hackers are also known as white hat hackers or penetration testers. You must have also heard about the famous CEH which is a certification course for ethical hackers and is pursued by many individuals today. Short for the Certified Ethical Hacker certification, this is one of the best ethical hacking certificate programs in the world, created by EC Council or The International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants, a global body that provides cybersecurity education and certifications. This article is concerned with ethical hacking as a discipline and how someone can create a career in it.
What is ethical hacking?
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Ethical hacking is the practice of finding vulnerabilities and security flaws in systems to protect it from malicious hackers. Before these vulnerabilities can be exploited, they are identified and fixed by security personnel like ethical hackers and penetration testers. Ethical hackers and penetration testers are similar but not the same. While an ethical hacker tries to find various vulnerabilities in a system, a penetration tester tries to focus on the security of a particular area.
How can you become an ethical hacker?
To work as an ethical hacker, you will need to clear a test that will assess your skills and grant you the certification necessary to practice this vocation professionally. If you have experience in the information technology or cybersecurity industry, then you could be eligible to attempt the exam directly. However, if you have no experience, then you will need to undergo ethical hacking training from a recognized institute first. As we mentioned above, the EC Council has many accredited training centers that provide comprehensive ethical hacking programs to provide world-class cybersecurity education to students all over the world from the comfort of their homes, thanks to online methods of learning. You can choose to complete your training from such an institute and kickstart your career whenever you want.
How big is the ethical hacking field?
Cybersecurity is a vast and highly dynamic field that depends on the emerging technological trends of the world. If you decide to practice ethical hacking, you will have to garner deep knowledge of all of its elements like social engineering, network hacking, web application hacking, malware analysis and so on. Knowing your way around different digital platforms Is essential for any ethical hacker or penetration tester.
Why is ethical hacking relevant today?
Ethical hackers are the saviours of organisations today. Be it a public organization or a private one, they all value their information and data immensely. But installing antivirus software and firewalls isn’t enough in today’s volatile scenario. It is quite a piece of cake for an average criminal hacker to penetrate into an organization’s network and launch a cyber attack on its devices. This is why organizations have now started to adopt a more proactive approach to cyber security. Apart from defensive methods, offensive cyber security, which mainly consists of ethical hacking and penetration testing, is a popular and important method to stay safe from cyber criminals and cyber terrorists. Keeping this in mind, one can imagine the immense value that ethical hackers provide to an organization in today’s age where information and data are more valuable than anything.
In a nutshell, if you want a career that is fulfilling, adventurous and highly promising on all fronts, then ethical hacking could be your calling.