From blackmail to fraud, the word ‘hacker’ has garnered a lot of infamousness in the last few decades. But let’s not be quick to judge the word because hackers are not all bad. Some hackers are out there to make sure that your security isn’t compromised. Big companies and banks hire hackers to help them seek out any weakness or vulnerability in the infrastructure to protect it from the exploitation of potential malicious hackers. Being an ethical hacker is actually a pretty good title and it’s a career that pays very well if you know what you’re doing. To become a hacker, you need to make sure you’ve secured a fair amount of knowledge and skills that can aid you on your quest. Information technology happens to be a pretty good starting place, and it will make a better hacker out of you. 

Understanding Ethical Hacking

Before you begin cracking your knuckles, it’s important to understand what the title of ethical hacker entails. In essence, ethical hackers focus on identifying vulnerabilities that could pose a danger to a cyber entity, providing useful countermeasures to cover the exposed weaknesses. Before they begin hacking any system, they must receive written permission from the owner of the network or computer they are testing. They must also ensure that the privacy of the organization they are penetrating is covered. Naturally, ethical hackers must provide a very transparent report of their findings, leaving no room for backdoors or slippery slopes that could cause trouble in the long run.

Information Technology Certifications

If enrolling in college is simply a decision you don’t have the luxury to make, don’t fret. On-the-job practice and training courses can definitely make up for the lack of formal education. Even those who have advanced college degrees take up IT courses to enhance their education. In a city like London, the competition in the cybersecurity field is scorching. As mentioned by IT consultants London, certified Apple and Microsoft technical experts are necessary for designing deployment strategies. Naturally, a new field like IT is more about accomplishments than credentials, so getting credentials is the easiest part, which can be done through courses. The CompTIA Security+ and Network+ certifications are the most important certifications you need to have to work with big names, adding on a Linux+ certification should also help you as a hacker.

Formal Information Technology Education

While there are some great hackers out there who don’t have any formal degrees from a college, the ethical hacking career can be boosted with formal certifications. When it comes to information security, it’s not usually a big deal to not have a degree, but there is no better way to understand the fundamentals of information technology than getting a college degree. Even though the majority of IT courses may have almost nothing to do with exploitation and hacking, they will provide you with a solid ground that can help you understand the very core of these infrastructures.

Best IT Courses You Should Take

Once you’ve decided to enroll in a college for an IT degree, you need to make sure that the courses you take are relevant to the ethical hacking career you’re carving. Networking, OS, app programming, database networks, structures, and scripting are all fundamental skills that you need to cover in your IT course. Naturally, any ethical hacker should have a programming language that they are capable of programming with, and the most popular languages used in this career are C++, Java, and C. Make sure you’ve also covered at least one database management systems like Oracle, MySQL, or SQL Server. Moving on, a scripting language like Python or Ruby are important for any ethical hacker.

Improved Scanning and Penetration

Hackers should never rush their way into any system, which is why being able to dissect a system is a necessity for both black-hat and white-hat hackers. Being a capable IT professional gives you the privilege of deep inspections of data structures, network information, security policies, and others. Scanning and testing the system for vulnerabilities takes place after the hacker has successfully penetrated the network. Information technology helps you understand the value of user accounts and network protocols that a company uses, giving you more insight that can help you cover those vulnerabilities.

Information Technology is a very vast field, and taking random courses without the right mindset will not help you become a better hacker. You need to focus on topics specifically related to the field of penetration testing and scanning for vulnerabilities, essentially security topics. The more you learn about the fundamentals of IT, the better you will become at discovering weaknesses in networks.

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