Is There Really Such a Thing as Ethical Hacking? – Blog Post

The term “hacks” has come to include any activity involving unethical penetration of databases, firewalls, and theft of information.

But here’s the kicker, not all hacking activities are malicious.

Ethical hacking is the authorized process of gaining access to a network or computer system, carried out by a “white hat” hacker who uses the same tools and resources as a malicious hacker.

These white hat hackers identify potential weaknesses in a network, website, app, or computer system and help businesses raise their security game by securing these vulnerabilities. But to be considered ethical, the hacker requires permission to search systems for possible security risks.

This may sound risky, but countless businesses use this strategy. Why? Because to beat a malicious hacker, you must think like one. In this article, we will discuss what ethical hackers do for businesses, and go through the ethical guidelines they must abide by when hacking into your systems.

What is an ethical hacker and what do they do?

As we mentioned, ethical hackers find and close all the gaps that may have been left open unknowingly and secure them from malicious cyber thieves looking for exposed data.

Here are just a few things ethical hackers do to help businesses protect themselves from bad actors:

Identify security misconfigurations

Security misconfigurations happen in the absence of a properly defined security framework.

Companies are required to follow industry security standards and comply with certain protocols that can reduce the risk of exposing their network. When these procedures aren’t followed, hackers can easily identify security gaps leading to catastrophic loss of important data.

This vulnerability is considered to be one of the most occurring and dangerous vulnerabilities. In 2019, Teletext faced a devastating security leakage, exposing 530,000 data files caused by a misconfigured Amazon Web Server. Some of the most common misconfigurations involve unencrypted files, misconfigured web applications, unsecured devices, and default or weak username and password settings.

Conduct vulnerability scans

Vulnerability scanning allows organizations to check whether their networks…