“The only person who can stop a bad guy on the internet is a good guy on the internet.”
The Internet has changed our lives, but there is always a threat of compromising valuable data either by bugs or by hackers. Nowadays there is no shortage of cyber-attacks gaining top story slots of news covers, latest being the WAWA data breach and that of the ‘460K Indian debit/credit card database put up for sale on dark-web’. (Source)
These incidents have given the word ‘HACKING’ a negative impression and media houses have named the ‘Hacker’ as a Criminal. Instead of generalizing this term ‘Hacking’ as evil or illegal activity, the masses should be educated about the good kind of hacking and the white hat hackers or ethical hackers.
Given frequent cyber-attacks, it has become imminent to emphasize the need for ethical hacking to safeguard the cyber world. As technology advances, people, and organizations alike are more prone to Cyber-Attacks. To stop a hacker, you have to think like one and this is what ethical hacking is all about. Even after all the threatening hacking events, we cannot avert the use of technology in our day-to-day life. Technology usage of every individual is not only limited to computers but also today our phones and other gadgets are smart too. Smart-watches, smart televisions and many such devices were interconnected through a network, which is difficult to manage for any automated antivirus program or firewalls. This gives immense need to promote Ethical hacking.
Ethical hacking aims to protect individual/organization’s system/network from illegal hacking and cyber-attacks by:
Using preventive measures to avoid security breaches
Safeguarding user information available in business transactions
Testing networks at regular intervals
Forming a computer system that averts hackers’ access and protects the system information from malicious attack
No organization can claim that their system and online data is 100% secured however, they can hire hackers that are more ethical and not leave critical data at the mercy of traditional testing tools.
Therefore, it is important that Ethical hacking should be learnt or promoted from Cyber Security point of view to stay secure.
Cyber security curriculum should be introduced in teaching institutions to build a force of white hat hackers which will be ready to tackle with the ones with malicious intent.
