What is an Ethical Hacker?

Common misconceptions

Before understanding what an ethical hacker is, there are some points that must be made. Hacking in the real world is not how the movies and TV make it out to be, there is a common misconception that hacking is easy and can be done by anyone and with very little knowledge. This is far from the truth. In reality ethically hacking a target, whether hired by a company to conduct a penetration test or sandboxing a lab environment, could take days. With this understanding in mind, let’s move onto exactly what an Ethical hacker is.

What is an Ethical Hacker?

An Ethical Hacker is someone who has spent a considerable amount of time learning the ins and outs of IT. Generally, it takes specialized knowledge in the Networking, Security, and programming disciplines of Information Technology. Not only that, but certain industry certifications are required by some companies to better show technical capabilities in hacking.

Why are Ethical Hackers useful in Cybersecurity?

Education aside, a company needs to know the current state of the systems and IT infrastructure. It’s all well and good implementing high tech AI Cybersecurity solutions and hiring a team of advanced Security Operation Center (SOC) analysts. But how well do all these precautions and tools secure the environment? The Company is certainly not going to sit idly by and wait to be breached to find out, so Ethical Hackers are hired.

Once hired, it is the job of the Ethical hacker to breach the network to find vulnerabilities that would potentially be exploited by a malicious threat actor (Black hat hacker).  It is the Ethical hacker’s job to penetrate the systems, therefore the term ‘penetration testing’ is used in the Cybersecurity field. You may also hear Ethical Hackers referred to as ‘White hat hackers.’ (Find more information about the types of hackers here.

Conclusion

Furthermore, the ethical hacker’s scope of exploitation techniques is contingent on the contract written by the company. It is not the Ethical hacker’s job to shut down the services of the company or to expose sensitive data. It is merely to find vulnerabilities that could be exploited and find flaws in the current security system of the company. The Ethical Hacker will write up a report after the vulnerabilities have been found which outlines exactly how to replicate the vulnerability and how it could be exploited. It is then up to the company to employ countermeasures to the vulnerability and safeguard the company’s infrastructure.

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