Helping to put defenses in place to secure or “harden” those weak spots.Discovering vulnerabilities in their employer’s networks and systems.Preventing malicious attackers from accessing and stealing private data.Generally speaking and depending on the needs of their employers, ethical hackers are engaged in such activities as penetration testing, vulnerability assessments and a range of strategies intended to keep their organizations safe from cyberattacks of all kinds. It is often said that, to excel at their jobs, these cybercrime-fighters must “think like a black-hat hacker” - that they must understand a black-hat hacker’s strategies, motivations and modus operandi in order to block intruders from illegally infiltrating networks and systems to engage in criminal activity. What Do Ethical Hackers Do?Įthical hackers are paid good money to try to break into computer systems. Read on for a closer look at the career landscape for white-hat hackers, whose services are in high demand across nearly all industries and who can often command salaries of $100,000 and above. The good news for current and aspiring cybersecurity professionals is that, when it comes to the world of ethical hacking, it pays to be on the right side of the law. While black-hat hackers work the dark side - using malware, ransomware phishing and a range of other tactics to pull off virtual break-ins, lootings and heists - their white-hat counterparts use similar high-tech tactics to defend against an ongoing stampede of cybercrime. Today, this same Wild West symbolism plays a central role in cyberspace - specifically in the way we talk about online outlaws and the ethical hackers whose job it is to rein in their nefarious activities and keep them from trespassing. In the old cowboy movies, the good guys typically wore a white hat and the bad guys wore a black one.

Type to learn 4 hack