Cyber criminals have already figured out their game and they are trying their level best to gain access to the secured systems, breaking/tampering firewalls, overriding the security integration set by IT systems for stealing valuable data and corporate information. The end game here is not known or clear to anyone but obviously the purpose for these professionals of doing these violent acts of crime is to cause havoc, preach digital vandalism and cripple the world of IT.
Cyber criminals or hackers engaged in such behavior either do it off of their own will to cause potential harm to the specific IT based systems or some personal gains i.e. financial input is always involved. The thing is that cyber breaches and anomalies are becoming more and more recurrent and to stop these the services of specific professionals known as penetration testers or ethical hackers need to be brought into consideration.
What is penetration testing or ethical hacking?
Pentesting or penetration testing is a discipline of information technology that brings into account the use of various skills, principles, technologies as well as the knowledge acquired by the professionals from over the years to check or speculate the technical systems in detail. Speculation here means that all the technical systems such as security systems, networking, marketing and or other sections of the IT-based company are remotely checked and concerned by the pentesting professionals in great detail. If you want to stretch it and go to the extended limits then online information security training is recommended as it would help you to conveniently catch up to course details.
The detailing here corresponds to finding any potential source of hazards, entry points by the cybercriminals or nodes of a breach within the networking systems. If found the professionals can then guide the company to eradicate the anomalies or devise them a modified general security plan which then can be implemented to overcome the issues as found within the analysis run by cyber officials.
A pentesting expert is duly responsible for running detailed analysis of various systems and networking parameters, for finding out various inconsistencies within working systems and how to overcome them. If you feel like that you have fell victim to either phishing or social engineering attacks and want to emerge strongly in the future, then this is the time to do so.
Ethical hacking
Ethical hacking is not so different than the pentesting or otherwise it can be said that the pentesting is in reality the extended version of ethical hacking. Ethical hackers can be pentesters but all pentesters can’t be ethical hackers. So, there is a clear difference for you there but on the other hand a detailed correspondence of ethical hacking is provided as follows;
Ethical hacking is sometimes also known as penetration testing refers to the act of intruding or penetrating multiple specific IT systems and features to explore hidden vulnerabilities and other possible points of the breach that can be used and exploit by an illicit hacker to gain access to these sensitive systems. After gaining access, these hackers can use the accessed information, causing loss of imperial data, financial loss, and other major damages from where the chances of counterfeiting with the ramifications start to shrink.
Ethical hackers are also known as the white hat hackers; these are not involved in the illicit activities but use their knowledge of the systems and networking for the penetration testing of the specified security attributes. Black hat hackers or otherwise cybercriminals use various tools and their dedicated knowledge of the systems for gaining unauthorized access to secured systems, exploiting them to acquire sensitive information and user data, and creating havoc in their wake.
This is the detailed information on the topic for ethical hackers and the pentesting experts, these professionals serve a multitude of dynamic purposes and are extreme assets for any dedicated organization or IT realm. After you have consumed all these facts it is time to move on and explore the job responsibilities of penetration tester which are as follows;
Job responsibilities;
The pentesting expert needs to be skilled and fall on the spot with all the responsibilities as mentioned below;
- Check the integrity of the currently installed security systems by performing various pentesting tests and methodologies
- Come up with new and updated settings, tools and equipment that can make the process of pentesting more efficient and result bearing.
- Find out or detect various vulnerabilities, loop holes and or breaches within the networking elements and develop certain processes to take care of these glitches once and for all
- Discuss and advice the senior board or management staff about the current condition of the IT security and whether or not there is a need to currently deploy an advanced security system or any modifications required with the current one
- Provide valuable feedback to the organization and to the development section of the IT industry so that related changes can be carried out in a speedy fashion
- Conduct the physical assessment of the servers data centers, networking devices and other various systems and providing the management with found results and the current condition of these assets
- In case of any breach or in the successive possibility of a breach, devise the disaster recovery systems and plan the backup of important user data. Such as personal and finical data along with any corporate data that holds any importance and needs to be recovered under such circumstances
All of these are the extended responsibilities of the cyber officials which are pentesting experts, but apart from all this valuable set of hard and soft skills is needed. For the soft skills the use of proper collaborative and communication is necessary, otherwise the professional might not be able to properly convey their message or concerns about the security standards.
As a prerequisite on the educational grounds, graduation is a must have but if the professional has only completed one of the pentesting supported certification then official proof will be needed to verify the claim made by the professional.
Although if you are new to the field and has not completed any kind of training then it is required that you at least enroll yourself into one of these pentesting training online so that you can better comprehend your responsibilities and practice your knowledge of the skills.