Generally, hacking is a term that is used in a negative sense. Hackers penetrate protected and unprotected systems and create mischief. Most of the time, they intend to steal valuable information and invade the privacy of others. Although, not all kinds of hacking are immoral. The type of hacking that is considered positive is called ethical hacking. These days getting an ethical hacking certification is all the hype now.
Although ethical hacking is not as simple as an SEO course, it is not rocket science either. Ethical hacking is, in effect, the opposite of illegal hacking. While illegal hacking aims at creating security breaches, ethical hacking is a system of checking if there are any weak points that someone can use to enter the system and then analyzing them to improve the security system.
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You do not need an NLP certification or another certification to learn ethical hacking. Ethical hacking identifies the problems and loopholes in the security system of an organization. Ethical hackers look for vulnerabilities in the system that a hacker could exploit. Some of these vulnerabilities are as follows:
- Injection attacks
- Changes in security settings
- Exposure of valuable data
- Breach in authentication protocols
- Use of components that are known to be vulnerable
Once the security system is inspected, a detailed report is made. It includes steps to compromise the vulnerabilities and loopholes that were discovered in the check and a Plan of Action to fix them.
Benefits of Learning Ethical Hacking
- It teaches you how to identify the various vulnerabilities in the security of a network.
- You can work for almost any sector and almost any industry. As your job includes preventing hackers from penetrating the system, a lot of corporations require you to test their network.
- Improving your skills and getting a better position or job becomes significantly easier when you know various concepts.
Here are some skills that an ethical hacker must have:
- Programming Languages: A good understanding of the various programming languages and operating systems is necessary if you intend to become an ethical hacker.
- Scripting Knowledge: An ethical hacker must also understand scripting languages to an extent if he wishes to explore attacks on networks.
- Understanding of Networks: You need to understand how various networks work and where they come from. Determine how one network is connected to the other and identify if there are security breaches in the network.
- Know your databases: Most attacks are committed at databases as sensitive information is held there. You need to possess knowledge of various databases and understand operations that are carried out there.
- Using various tools: Every ethical hacker must understand how different tools meant for hacking works.
Organizations employ ethical hackers to help detect and resolve security breaches in their networks and databases. Many people wish to pursue ethical hacking because it is the legal form of hacking, and it is planned and approved by both the organization as well as the government.