Required Skills for Ethical Hacking : Cyber Security

raselahmed1337, Required Skills for Ethical Hacking : Cyber Security

 


As an ethical hacker, you will need to understand various hacking techniques such as −

  • Password guessing and cracking
  • Session hijacking
  • Session spoofing
  • Network traffic sniffing
  • Denial of Service attacks
  • Exploiting buffer overflow vulnerabilities
  • SQL injection

In this chapter, we will discuss some of the skills that you would require to become an expert in Ethical Hacking.

Basic Skills

Computer Hacking is a Science as well as an Art. Like any other expertise, you need to put a lot of effort into acquiring knowledge and becoming an expert hacker. Once you are on track, you will need more effort to keep up-to-date with the latest technologies, new vulnerabilities, and exploitation techniques.

  • An ethical hacker must be a computer systems expert and need to have very strong programming and computer networking skills.
  • An ethical hacker needs to have a lot of patience, persistence, and perseverance to try again and again and wait for the required result.

Additionally, an ethical hacker should be smart enough to understand the situation and other users’ mindsets to apply social engineering exploits. A good ethical hacker has great problem-solving skills too.

Courses & Certifications

This tutorial provides the basic guidelines to become a successful Ethical Hacker. If you want to excel in this field, then you might choose to pursue the following courses and certifications −

  • Obtain a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or A+ Certificate to gain an understanding of the most common hardware and software technologies
  • Get into a programmer’s role for a few years and then switch to a tech support position.
  • Proceed to get network certifications like Network+ or CCNA and then security certifications like Security+, CISSP, or TICSA.
  • It is recommended that you get some work experience as a Network Engineer and System Administrator to understand networks and systems inside out.
  • Keep going through various books, tutorials, and papers to understand various computer security aspects and take them as a challenge to secure your network and computer systems as a network security engineer.
  • Study courses that cover creating Trojan horses, backdoors, viruses, and worms, denial of service (DoS) attacks, SQL injection, buffer overflow, session hijacking, and system hacking.
  • Master the art of penetration testing, footprinting and reconnaissance, and social engineering.
  • Finally, go for a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Certification.

GIAC (Global Information Assurance Certification) and Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) are additional IT security certifications that will add a lot of value to your profile.

Final Note

You need to stay as a White Hat Hacker which means you need to work within given boundaries. Never intrude or attack any computer or network without the required permission from the authorities. As a final note, it is highly recommended that you refrain from engaging yourself in black hat hacking which may spoil your entire career.