Ethical Hacking Certification Training in Melbourne

 

Aspects and Importance of Ethical Hacker

Ethical hackers are often referred to as ‘white hats’, while malicious hackers are ‘black hats’. These millinery descriptors come from old western films where the good, heroic cowboy often wore a crisp white Stetson and the mean, gun-toting drifters wore beat-up old black hats. Like the good cowboy, white hat hackers understand the ways and means of malicious hackers and use this knowledge to protect law-abiding citizens (and businesses and organisations) from attacks. In addition to having consent, ethical hackers observe the privacy and other policies of the organisation they’re working for. Often working as contractors, they have access to the brain and beating heart of an organisation. So, it’s essential that they respect the privacy of that organisation and the individuals involved. When they find vulnerabilities, ethical hackers take steps to resolve them and ensure that they can’t be exploited by others. This may involve alerting software developers or hardware manufacturers. In early 2018 several ethical hackers alerted Intel to a vulnerability in their chips that had been there for over 20 years. The role of the Cyber Security expert White hat hackers are not necessarily black hats who have learned the error of their ways and turned away from the dark side. Instead, ethical hacking is an extension of the cyber security process that goes beyond establishing systems and processes for a secure system. Building on their strong programming and networking skills, cyber security experts collect a wide range of data through system audits to gain a complete understanding of organisations vulnerabilities. Then they embark on penetration testing and adopt the behaviours of a hacker to attempt to exploit those vulnerabilities. By identifying the vulnerabilities and identifying the methods of exploitation, they are able to resolve issues. This can be done in a test setting before systems go live, or in a real-world setting with fully operational systems and networks. The impact of cyber security on business  The Global State of Information Security Survey 2018 shows that cyber threats to the integrity of data are a rising concern in business. Until recently it wasn’t unusual for organisations to take the view that ‘it’s unlikely to happen to us’. The Survey reveals that around 30% of businesses have reported loss or damage of internal records as a result of a security incident. Despite the fact that one in three businesses have experienced a security incident, less than half have yet to introduce the key processes for managing cyber risk. This suggests that the need for experts to identify vulnerabilities is also on the rise. Bug-Bounty programs Some organisations that are targets for hackers have introduced bug bounty programs to entice hackers to put on a white hat and claim a prize, rather than a black hat to exploit their vulnerability. Internet giants like Facebook, Google and the United States Department of Defence were early starters with bug-bounty programs that invited developers to discover and resolve bugs in their software and systems. Now organisations of all sizes are running bug-bounty programs as part of their cyber security practices. Bugcrowd and Hacker One help these businesses establish bug-bounty programs then act as an interface for hackers, maintaining lists of the bounties on offer.