Ethical hackers: how they help us

From the word, “hacker” lot of people think of dark, wicked men sitting in server rooms, surrounded by high capacity computers, doing bad. Many do not know that this definition is most likely to fit crackers, who are the ones that violate systems and break into networks with malicious intent. Hackers, on the other hand, are trying to enter systems to find dangerous holes in them and share their knowledge so that those threats can be eliminated. But as the terminology is mostly mixed up nowadays, we usually use “ethical hacker” for the good guys and hackers/crackers for the bad ones.

Not all hackers are bad boys- some powers for good

Hackers’ reputations as fraudsters, criminals and thieves are not always fair. While there are a lot of security breaches because of the work of crackers, others help people and organizations with their knowledge. The whole terminology is a bit wishy-washy because we use the word hacker referring to the negative part of the job as well, so the term “ethical hacker” pop up to distinguish them from the bad boys, and to clear the case.

 Ethical hackers are making up a great part of the cybersecurity community, by using their skills positively and helpfully. The most recent cyber vulnerabilities, Spectre and Meltdown were also discovered and published by a team of ethical hackers. They cooperate with companies and publish most of their findings afterwards they gave the company a chance to fix it. Most of the time finding a hole in the IT system means a huge sum of reward, which makes finding bugs highly profitable.

What do ethical hackers do day to day?

The purpose of ethical hackers is to maintain the level of the security system and network infrastructure. They try to bypass the system and expose any weak links before crackers do. They do a lot of research, document their methods and publish their findings when the time is right. They also provide feedback and verification when an organization fixes security issues.

Do businesses need ethical hackers?

The shortest answer is most definitely yes. With the rise of IT security threats, ethical hackers can help companies patch their security holes before an outsider cracker breaks in and places some malicious program inside the system. A lot of organizations face cyber-attacks nowadays, leading to the growing need of having professional ethical hackers who can safeguard their networks. Banks, insurance companies, and other enterprises, handling sensitive databases are constantly under attack, therefore the number of insider ethical hacker employees have risen to protect their daily work.

How does one become an ethical hacker?

Besides a proper IT and industry knowledge, a fitting state of mind means one is already halfway there to become an ethical hacker. A strong desire is needed to use one’s talent for the good purposes and not for wrecking the system. As for practice methods, the best way to start learning is to explore. Lots of online courses, academies, company supported trainings are available for trained professionals, as this line of work is becoming more and more important.