Ethical Hacking & Penetration Testing - Everything You Need To Know

The culture of hackers started in the 1960s and 1970s as an intellectual movement: “exploring the unknown, documenting the arcane, and doing what others cannot.”

Ethical hacking is the act of legally breaking into systems, computers, and devices in order to test its defense. The main goal is to bypass the security system to identify possible data breaches and threats.

Contrary to the criminal hacking we know, this is absolutely authorized, planned, and most importantly, legal.

Nowadays, ethical hacking has become one of the most wanted jobs. Besides the working, you are enjoying the fun of getting into another computer, of course, without the fear of being arrested.

More and more companies are hiring ethical hackers so they can find the flaws on their web or system.

However, there is really nothing you could lose. If the hacking passes the defenses, the client is presented with it and has the chance to work on the issue and eventually fix it, as on the other hand, if the hack cannot be done it is even better because the system is deemed secure enough.

Most of the time, the ethical hackers are hired before a new system or a major update is going live. They execute the testing, search for weak spots, and take notes of everything they find.

Some of the flaws that the ethical hackers are usually checking are injection attacks, changes in the security settings, a revelation of confidential data, breach in authentication protocols, elements in the system that can possibly be used as access points.

Ethical hackers are usually people with a great knowledge of operating systems and computer networks technology. The knowledge of an ethical hacker is pretty much comparable with the one of the “criminal” hacker.

It is not a lie that now black hat hackers are turned into white hat hackers and using what they know to hack ethically.

You have probably heard that the hackers are divided into three particular groups, white hats, black hats, and grey hats.

The white hats, or the ethical hackers are aiding the clients in strengthening the defenses of their system by presenting the findings. Before entering your system, white hats always ask for permission.

A black hat hacker is mostly the person who is doing the same thing but illegally. These hackers exploit the computer system or the computer network without authorization or consent from anyone. Mostly, the black hat hackers are driven by their personal gains, and exposing the findings in the public is not their biggest interest.

The grey hackers are the ones that have the abilities to be good enough as both white and black hackers, hence, sometimes he can do the procedure legally, and sometimes illegally. They gain unauthorized access into the organization’s system for fun with the intent to highlight the weakness and exploit them for a bounty.

Also, here an there you can hear of the term suicide hackers, and the term is pretty self-explanatory, meaning they are not worried about the consequences of the hacking and their goal is to damage the organization whatsoever. They can also be called hacktivists.

The importance of ethical hacking can be seen through the prism of the bigger picture.

There is this type of hacking called state-sponsored hacking, meant to be used so that the governments can secure confidential information regarding enemy states, politics, and much more.

As the international conflicts are growing, it comes as no surprise that the threat of cyber-terrorism is here and terrorist groups are funding cybercriminals.

That’s why ethical hackers are here to mark the loopholes of the security, the access points, as well as other important things. Moreover, the ethical hackers also delegate strategies to protect the important data for the organizations and government agencies.

While we are at of cybersecurity, we want to remind you to check our previous blog article where we covered the topic by following the link here.

You might also have heard of the term penetration testing or pen-testing. Usually, people tend to mix up pen testing with ethical hacking. Even though they are not far from each other in terms of definition, there are still some key differences between these two.

In fact, penetration testing is a specific type of ethical hacking. That’s when the company reaches out to a certified professional to evaluate how strong the cybersecurity defenses are.

There are few types of penetration testing and those include: external network tests, internal network tests, web application tests, and wireless network tests.

On the opposite side of ethical hacking, penetration tests are mostly done at a specified time, for example, quarterly or any time the client is going live with new major updates.

To wrap it up, at different times, both ethical hacking and penetration testing will be needed at your organization, meaning they will both be the right solution as they are fulfilling certain cybersecurity goals.

The ethical hacking is more comprehensive and uses deeper evaluation and it gives the hacker the freedom to use whatever method they want, where on the other side, penetration testing mostly focuses on system weaknesses and is more limited.

At SnapStack Solutions, we have a rich experience with both penetration testing and ethical hacking. Should you consider such a service or you already know you need it, or simply you want to learn more, let us know we would be glad to help.

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