About Ethical Hacking
Ethical hacking is also called penetration testing, red teaming, or white-hat hacking. Whatever you call it, ethical hacking is about pushing your security to its limits so that you can find the weak spots before a malicious hacker does.
Ethical hacking is different from other methods used to assess the security of computer systems and networks. Most commonly referred to as penetration testing these techniques use attacks by ethical hackers in order to test and improve the security of the same system or network.
An ethical hacker performs hacking in a controlled environment, unlike a black hat hacker or a grey hat hacker. Ethical hackers must abide by established rules and regulations. The information gathered by ethical hackers is usually provided to the organization that has hired them for the purpose of making their systems more secure.
Types of ethical hacking
There are many ethical hacking courses currently available. They all vary in terms of difficulty and style; some require you to take an exam, while others just require you to submit a single written report or a project.
1. Vulnerability Assessment
Vulnerability assessments are the testing of software or hardware and reporting of its security vulnerabilities, especially if these can be carried out within computer systems, to the developers for fixing. Vulnerability assessments can also be performed by internal staff or third parties.
2. Penetration Testing
A penetration test is a method used by ethical hackers to test the defences and security procedures of a device, network, or system to find out if there are vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Penetration tests can be conducted manually or automated. Penetration tests are very similar to vulnerability assessments and differ only in the scope of their attacks. A vulnerability assessment usually focuses on finding and documenting weaknesses or flaws, whereas a penetration test will attempt to exploit these flaws to determine if an attacker would gain unauthorized access to systems.
