What advantages has ethical hacking brought to the software sector?

We need more moral hackers in a cyberspace overrun with them. However, hackers have long been represented as the evil guys by the media and popular culture everywhere in the world. They are portrayed by society as cybercriminals and outliers who aim to knock down anything that stands in their way while also stealing data and destroying systems.

There is no shortage of news reports, articles, films, and television programmes that demonise hackers. Hackers are frequently portrayed as outsiders who utilise their computer skills to cause harm and conduct crime, from the 1995 film Hackers to the more current Blackhat.

It's crucial to realise that this is only one side of the story, even while there have been real-world, devastating occurrences that cybercriminals have instigated that have served as fuel for this negative propaganda.

Contrary to popular belief, there is a growing and largely unappreciated community of ethical (also known as "white-hat") hackers who work tirelessly to make the online world a better and safer place. While there are many criminals with excellent coding and hacking skills, this community is largely unrecognised. These people, to put it mildly, use their cybersuperpowers for good, not for evil.

For instance, both Tim Berners-Lee, the man responsible for the World Wide Web, and Linus Torvalds, the man behind Linux, were hackers. The list is lengthy for the same reason that the list of hackers who later became programmers is lengthy: each person recognised a superior approach.

How does ethical hacking work?

The EC-Council defines an ethical hacker as "someone who is typically working with an organisation and who can be trusted to undertake an effort to access networks and/or computer systems using the same tactics and techniques as a hostile hacker."

Since bad guys will constantly be looking for loopholes, backdoors, and other covert ways to access information they shouldn't, the ethical hacker's role is crucial. In addition to helping reveal system faults, ethical hackers also helps in fixing them before criminals have a chance to take use of those vulnerabilities. They are a crucial component of the cybersecurity ecosystem and frequently uncover critical undiscovered flaws in systems more effectively than any security solution ever could. According to Indeed.com, certified ethical hackers earn an average of $99,000 a year. According to Steven Graham, senior director at the EC-Council, the starting wage for a certified ethical hacker is $95,000.

Benefits of ethical hacking for the software sector

Nowadays, ethical hacking has grown more commonplace, and to maintain the security of their systems, global tech firms like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla, IBM, and others hire individual hackers or teams of hackers.

A 26% surge in companies conducting bug bounty programmes, where they strengthen their security defences with hackers, has been seen in the last year alone as a result of the success hackers have had in identifying crucial vulnerabilities. In addition to this, ethical hacking has given enterprises, particularly those in the software industry, a variety of advantages.

Take the necessary precautions to prevent system security breaches.

An ethical hacker takes precautions to prevent security breaches, such as checking their own computers with tools like Nmap or Nessus to look for open ports. Each port's vulnerabilities are researched, and corrective action is then taken.

Patch installations will be examined by an ethical hacker to ensure that they cannot be misused.

Additionally, they practise social engineering techniques like dumpster diving, which entails searching garbage cans for passwords, graphs, sticky notes, or any other important information that could be utilised to launch an assault.

Every so often, conduct network penetration tests.

Regularly testing the network for weak links is one of the greatest techniques to stop unauthorised hacking. By continually identifying new vulnerabilities, ethical hackers contribute to system maintenance and updating. Ethical hackers take it a step further by investigating the extent of the harm that can result from the discovered vulnerability. This specific procedure, called pen testing, is used to find network vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. Pen testing can be done in many different ways. Depending on its needs, the organisation may employ several techniques. The following pen testing techniques can all be used by ethical hackers:

• Targeted testing including both the hacker and members of the organisation. The employees of the company will be informed of the hacker activity.
• All externally exposed systems, including web servers and DNS, are subject to external testing.
• Internal testing identifies security holes that are accessible to authorised internal users.
• Blind testing imitates actual hacker attacks.

Testers must conduct reconnaissance before an attack because they are given scant information about the target. The best argument in favour of hiring ethical hackers is pen testing.

For the software sector, ethical hackers have created computers and programmers.

Many people in Silicon Valley back in the early days of the personal computer would today be regarded as hackers because they disassembled things and put them back together in novel and exciting ways. Many of the proto-hackers became more aware about the various technologies and how to protect them from harmful assaults as a result of their drive to investigate systems and networks to understand how they functioned.

Many people who identify as hackers are also fantastic programmers, just as many early computer fans turned out to be outstanding at creating new machines and applications. The open-source software movement has maintained this tradition of the hacker as the inventor. Hackers generate, test, and improve a large portion of the open-source code, frequently during collaborative computer programming events known as "hackathons." You still gain from the elegant solutions that hackers develop that inspire or are outright copied by commercial software businesses, even if you never touch an open-source piece of software.

In order to protect customer information, ethical hackers work to stop data breaches.

The new oil of the digital age is customer personal information. All systems depend on data. However, despite the fact that companies that gather and use consumer data have grown more valuable and potent, recent incidents show that even the most well-known brands in the world are susceptible to consumer trust violations. Therefore, it is crucial for software companies to win customers' trust by maintaining the security of their data.

Ethical hackers will help you be ready for the worst in such a situation. They will collaborate with the IT response plan to ensure data security and help patch holes when they do occur. Otherwise, you run the danger of responding to problems or crises in a disorganised, inconsistent, and delayed manner. Aligning the way your company will communicate with stakeholders is also crucial. This will help limit improper behaviours and lessen the need for quick decisions during a real crisis. In order to find weaknesses and gaps in your procedure and better prepare your staff for such a pressure-cooker situation when it occurs, they may also assist in executing a cybersecurity crisis simulation.

Plan for information security raising security consciousness at all levels

You need to have a plan to protect the security of your information assets regardless of how big or little your business is. Information security experts create a plan like this, known as a security programme.

The security programme is mostly created by the IT security team, but if done in collaboration with ethical hackers, they can offer the framework for maintaining the business at a desired security level. By evaluating the dangers the business confronts, they can also decide how to reduce them and make plans for how to keep the programme and security policies current.