In the 21st century, the internet has become our daily diet, something that we cannot do without. It is the lifeblood of our economy and our most important means of communication across the entire planet. It won’t be wrong to say that the internet is our second home. From students to entrepreneurs, everyone relies on mobile phones and laptops to carry out their daily operations. But, at the same time, these devices also serve as the home of many viruses, malware and infections that can not only steal our data, but can also steal our money, computing power and confidentiality. Many times, these infections hide in the roots of our devices without getting noticed, ever. Owing to these, cyber crime has become a rising menace that needs to be addressed as seriously and urgently as possible.
Government sponsored cyber espionage, threats on healthcare, nuclear energy and military sectors, hacking of highly sensitive citizen data, and many other threats currently loom over the society, making us helpless puppets of those who try to exploit the binary world for their own benefit. Even though network defense, application security, cloud security and many other cyber security practices are followed diligently by many organizations that deal with sensitive data, they are not enough to ward off cyber threats completely. There is no protection against employees who fall for phishing mails and fraud messages. In such a scenario, the best defense is by playing offense on oneself, i.e., ethical hacking, which is nothing but an offensive approach to cyber security. Have you ever heard of CEH (Certified Ethical Hacking)? It is a worldwide recognized program that certifies ethical hackers for this very purpose. It is ethical hackers who can wear the shoes of mastermind hackers and target the weakest points in your system that even other security practices can’t cover.
Ethical hackers are, thus, the only antidote to cyber threats. They are professionals trained in the art of vulnerability assessment and penetration testing who perform an authorised and legally permitted attack on a system. Ethical hacking course provides these professionals with an in-depth understanding of a hacker’s mind, and coaches them to use the same tools and techniques used to conduct cyber crime. This way, entities who hire ethical hackers to perform penetration testing are able to identify security loopholes, bugs and other mistakes and fix them before they are discovered by someone with enough motivation to exploit them for malicious gains.
It is rightly said that in the world of the internet, ethical hackers are the vaccine against cyber crime. They are those who protect us from getting attacked by vicious criminal minds of the digital world. Ethical hacking was a term that was popular a few years back but had lost its relevance for many as the focus shifted on making the internet a cheaper and more accessible place. However, everyone knows that the internet and digital space cannot sustain itself for a long time unless it is made safe and secure to deal with. As a result of the increasing digital population, heavy use of social media, emergence of e-commerce sites and intense digitization of many organizations, cyber crime became widespread and rampant. Needless to say, ethical hacking became mainstream again. Many students are once again taking an active interest in this exciting field, ready to use their technical skills for the noble purpose of making the virtual place we inhabit safer from crimes. Last but not the least, we must not forget our own responsibilities towards making the internet safe and secure which includes being vigilant while browsing the internet, saying no to freebies, reporting any illegal activities and taking adequate cyber security measures to protect our own devices.