Ethical Hacking Is A Great Career Option
Hacking has various meanings and a hacker is not always necessarily a bad person. There are three types of hackers, white, gray and black hats.
While hacking may have negative implications, white hat hacking also offers lucrative career option for wannabe engineers and software professionals.
Ethical hackers are the most sought after tech professionals in the tech world. Which is why you should consider hacking a career option.
White hat hackers are security researchers or ethical hackers who break security for good reasons, either to test the security system or to perform penetration tests and vulnerability assessments for a client.
White hat hackers inform the company they work for once they discover a vulnerability in software so that the flaw can be fixed. For identifying any flaws in software, companies that have bug bounty programs these days pay white hats anywhere between $500 to more than $100,000 by selling that information.
Businesses need Ethical Hackers now more than ever
Let us know why ethical hackers are sought after by various businesses. Almost every company including the emerging startups invest time, money and resources in securing their systems and platforms to prevent data breaches, DDOS attacks and illegal intrusions.
On the other-hand cyber criminals have become more and more sophisticated and number of data breaches and cyber-attacks are increasing minute by minute.
With this scenario, there is no option but to invest more in cyber security skills, training and technology. It is estimated that by 2021, the global cyber spending will most probably cross $1 trillion.
With cyber criminals getting more ingenious and sophisticated and data breaches happening almost daily, businesses look to ethical hacking professionals who can prevent devastating security intrusions, DDOS attacks and cyber security breaches and protect their networks, Apps and backend systems.
Ethical hackers conduct controlled cyber-attacks on web applications and servers called penetration tests aka pen-tests to find vulnerabilities and fix them.
Unlike malicious ‘black hat’ hackers who exploit these for illegitimate gains, ethical hackers and security experts provide the company with details needed to fix flaws, before black hat hackers can find these flaws and exploit them. Cyber criminals and ethical hackers think alike and hence businesses will have a deeper insight into how a hacker thinks like.
Without pen-tests, security holes, exploits, bugs and zero-days will remain unnoticed and existent thus, leaving an organization or business in a position that a black hat hacker or cybercriminal could cause both monetary and goodwill loss.
Bright career prospects in Ethical Hacking
Various companies have also started introducing bug bounty programs to attract white hat hackers and security researchers and motivate them to find flaws for greater good.
For example, Google has a very good bug bounty program which helps it update and fix its premier browser, Chrome against cyber-attacks.
Facebook also has its own bug bounty program which helps it keep its social media network primed to counter and cyber-attack. And the world’s most attacked company, Microsoft has recently increased its bug bounty payout to match the industry standards.
When hiring an ethical hacker look out for industry-standard certifications such as EC Council’s Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) or GIAC’s GPEN.
You Might Also Read:
When Your White Hat Is Really a Black Hat:
Strategies For A Cyber Security Culture (£):
