The information security industry is growing at a rate of over 21 per cent. This is because information security is mandatory for all companies with an IT backbone in India. However, Internet security is no longer a grave concern for IT companies alone. Every business has some form of online presence today, and, therefore, cyber security has become a key focus area across sectors.
Hacking is a term that is often portrayed negatively. It is a term used to describe virtual crimes. But changing that is another term that is coming up fast — ethical hacking. Ethical hackers are trained professionals who are hired by companies for hacking into their networks and find the loopholes in their systems. They also help find solutions to these problems. LearnSocial as a portal which provides Ethical hacking as a course, uses their training sessions to make people understand what ethical hacking is and also about the ethics surrounding it. The company hopes to create a secure IT system and deliver knowledge that can build skills in an individual for the IT Security Domain.
Different types of hacking Hacking is often discreet, and so the ones being hacked do not even realise that their information is being stolen. A few ways of hacking that are prevalent today are —
Trojan viruses: Programmes that share files via messengers.
Hijacking and impersonation: There are various ways a hacker can impersonate someone else. Eavesdropping on unsuspecting users to retrieve user accounts, passwords and other user related information is one way.
Denial of service: A hacker can launch a denial of service (DoS) attack on an instant messenger user and a partial DoS attack will cause a user end to hang, or use up a large portion of CPU resources, causing the system to become unstable.
Phishing: Not all phishing attacks require a fake website. Fake text messages from banks or other companies can often tell users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts.
In India, hackers also work their way into company servers to retrieve sensitive information. There are also those who try to use phishing techniques and hack individual computers to get their user account passwords and bank credentials. They create fake websites and make the user key in sensitive information.
Ethical hacking as a career Ethical hacking provides enormous opportunities for those taking it up as a career. Renowned companies like Wipro, IBM, Infosys, Reliance and Airtel are always on the lookout for efficient hacking professionals. Ethical hacking aspirants can work in departments that need network security, system administrator or manager, network security engineer, systems/applications security executive, ethical hacker, data security specialist, computer forensics investigator, security certified programmer and so on. With more people turning gadget-friendly, India has emerged as a country that has a vast potential for e-commerce and online financial transactions. Online payments come with the risk of sharing sensitive data which might be misused. Hence, it is pivotal for denizens to train as many as possible to equip them to track data theft.
Courses In order to become an ethical hacker, one needs a solid grounding in the Computer Science. This is imperative if one has to outthink sharp, aggressive and dedicatedly malevolent criminal hackers. It is therefore advisable to study ethical hacking at the postgraduate level, after pursuing a B.Tech or B.Sc course from a reputed institution. This equips the student with strong theoretical foundations as well as practical specialisations to work in a rapidly-changing and extremely challenging environment.
In India, there are several institutes where one can study to become a professional legal hacker. Some of these are Ethical Hacking Training Institute, New Delhi; School of Vocational Education and Training, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Indian School of Ethical Hacking, Kolkata. NIIT and the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants (EC-Council) have also recently started programmes to train aspirants in professional hacking.
Ethical hacking emerged as a $3.8 billion industry in the U.S. alone, last year. As per the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), there is a requirement of over 77,000 hacking professionals in India. Despite the escalating demand, ethical hacking has still not been able to grab the interest of students who wish to take it up fulltime. Hence, India has only 22,000 professional hackers as of now. NASSCOM also iterated that the digital security scenario in India is threatened at $8 billion, annually.
