There’s an easy and simple way to become an ethical hacker without a degree in information security. It guarantees a secure job in the emerging market of cyber security.
Stay tuned as you’ll shortly read the best practices of becoming an ethical hacker without much.
But first just a few words on who is an ethical hacker
Ethical hackers are the good people whose job is to find weaknesses in IT systems and report their findings to business owners. This way they protect the systems.
These personnel use a handful of technologies to do their job. Fortunately, these technologies are user-friendly and simple enough to learn in just a few days.
How to start learning ethical hacking directly?
Here’s the thing: A well-planned course on ethical hacking covers all the latest hacking techniques and technologies.
How exactly: Fortunately you only need to learn a hand-ful of technologies to become an ethical hacker. No in-depth knowledge is required to perform using these tools. This is because they can automatically detect attacks.
Start from web security.
Most of the ethical hacking technologies are aimed at protecting websites. That’s why starting your learning with the understanding of web security is a smart start.
Examples of these technologies include sqlsmart, burp suite and invicti. Within just a couple of hours, a user can learn these friendly tools and scan websites for weaknesses.
Alongside practicing on the above tools, you can obtain theoretical knowledge on basic and easy information security concepts– such as the cyber kill chain framework which is a step by step process of protecting digital networks.
The next steps:
Network Security
Once you develop a base on web security, and feel passionate about it, the next step is to move to network security. It’s a slightly advanced skill of ethical hacking and is highly demanded in the information security market.
You need a basic understanding of network working to understand how attacks on networks are carried out. For example, to perform an ARP spoofing attack you should understand the concept of IP address and its equivalent MAC address. This allows you to use ARP requests to deceive a machine to assign you the IP address of a user thus diverting user traffic to you.
Common cyber attacks
Next, gain know-how on other common cyber attacks such as using malware attack, OS command injection and SQL injection attacks. For these, you have to acquire knowledge of malwares, operating system working and database language (SQL).
Though difficult it sounds, these concepts are only understood on the basic level and are easy to digest.
Social Engineering
An interesting, rather non-technical cyber security is social engineering. It’s the act of making people reveal secret information such as passwords or information related to users and systems that grants access to attackers.
As an ethical hacker, it’s important to use social engineering tactics to find vulnerabilities which are a result of your team under the influence of these tactics. Then countermeasures could be used to mitigate these threats.
Begin ethical hacking today!
So the above prospects tell you how ethical hacking can be learnt without enrolling in a degree program on information security.
Now it’s time to start the work. Enroll in a short course on ethical hacking, preferably a live course. This way you will be able to ask questions and interact with the instructor easily.
Spend at least 2 hours on learning ethical hacking concepts. Follow along with hands-on practice and take time with a concept before moving on to the next.
Your weekend time on practicing ethical hacking would be icing on the cake.
Remember, your dedication is the guiding light for you. So keep your hopes high and remain persistent with your learning. One day your hard work will pay off in the form of all your professional and financial expectations being fulfilled.
3 reasons why ethical hacking career is emerging
There are 3 reasons why ethical hacking as a worthy career to invest your time in.
- To begin with, academic programs in ethical hacking remain scarce globally while the dependency on the internet requires a robust security control for organizations. This creates a huge supply-demand gap. Organizations need talented ethical hackers to provide secure services for users as regulators create strict privacy guidelines.
- In addition, the frequent news of volunteer hackers revealing loopholes in big tech products has brought privacy awareness in public. To sustain customer trust, tech companies now employ white hat hackers to find and fix these threats in advance.
- Finally, with the prevailing cloud technology, where enterprises are migrating their processes on the cloud, new security needs are highlighted. The massive interest of companies in cloud technology creates yet another area of security for ethical hackers to work on.
Wondering what ethical hacking looks like? Read how a white hat hacker– Rafeh Baloch revealed a bug in Google search engine in 2014.
Do you have questions regarding a career in ethical hacking? Feel free to ask in the comments section. All answers come from an experienced ethical hacker.
