Ethical hacking: What is it and how is it learned?

In recent years, cyber attacks have increased exponentially, causing damage to the global economy of around 450 billion dollars a year. It is estimated that this number will continue to grow to close to 2.1 trillion dollars by 2019.

Companies represent the sectors most affected by this type of threat. Cyber ​​attacks usually target the most important assets for an organization: data; so the company has made cyber security a priority because of the potential risks involved.

For this reason, companies and institutions are increasingly worried about having strong defenses that enable them to overcome the possible attacks they must face and which, in many cases, can be prevented through ethical hacking.

What is ethical hacking?

But what is that and why is it so important? The work of an ethical hacker in a company is to penetrate their computer systems, networks and other resources systematically and organized with prior authorization from the organization.

This allows finding, knowing, and resolving vulnerabilities that can be used by malicious hackers or even criminal organizations to access the company’s systems. Hacking professional ethics has become a protection for companies around the world because it is the only effective method to verify the security of an organization. The ethics is also used by leading software developers to test the effectiveness and security of marketed software. For example, Billdu Invoice App for iPad, a modern billing application for iPad users must pass a series of independent tests to ensure it is safe from hackers.

The purpose of ethical hacking

Therefore, the aim of ethical hacking is to evaluate computer security and identify vulnerabilities in systems, networks, or system infrastructure.

To do this, they use the same skills, methods and techniques as conventional hackers or “black hats”, also known as crackers, to avoid security as they would and determine whether it is a hacker, the possibility of unauthorized access or other malicious activity .

However, instead of exploiting any loopholes they find for their personal benefit, ethical hackers document it and provide advice on how to improve them so that the organization can strengthen their computer security.

In summary, it can be said that the main difference between an ethical hacker and a cracker is the legality of their actions.

How to study this discipline

And, how do you learn to be ethical hackers? Although it has become a professional figure that is highly demanded by organizations, the ethics of hacking is still a very young discipline.

This fact is the main reason why there is no special and official training on ethical hacking, but usually people who have studies in the fields of computer science, mathematics or information security and have studied hacking techniques independently.

However, in response to increasing demand and the need for companies to include these numbers to protect their security systems, the offer of education in this field also increased.

There is no doubt that ethical hacking techniques have become an indispensable tool for protecting company security, so the presence of ethical hackers in them will continue to grow and become important in the fight against cyber attacks.