Should Anyone Do Ethical Hacking?

Before I answer the question let us understand hacking.

Hacking, according to my understanding, is the process of gaining access to another person's computer or network illegally.

According to The Economic Times, "We are talking about ethical hacking, which is the need of the hour, to protect all online transactions from the wrath of viruses. Here’s on the potential of the career Ethical hacking is different - in terms that it is not about randomly downloading ready-made tools from the internet and using them to attack computer systems. Ethical hacking is a scientific approach of understanding the tools, techniques and methodologies used by malicious hackers, thereby evaluating and mitigating the enormous threat posed by them. In other words, it is studying the vulnerability of a computer system and designing a security system, which is non-hackable."

My first impression of the term 'ethical hacking' is like setting a thief to catch another thief. But I suppose there is more to it than meets the eye. We live in a complex world and money is the supreme driving force of life. Without technology that has created this intense competition, our frantic lives would come to a stand still.

In this fast-changing times any company, big or small , has vast streams of information flooding each day. Your company can only survive by creating distinctive value; i.e, by generating new possibilities for customers. You live or die by your ability to uncover new possiblities. When you are in the grip of unrelenting competition, especially in the virtual world dominated by computers and their software, law enforcement agencies are having to grapple with more sophisticated forms of skullduggery.

According to The Economic Times article, an Ethical hacker is a person who has to ‘hack’ into the mind of malevolent hackers and identify vulnerabilities that they can exploit. Ethical hackers use the same tools, techniques and methodologies that a typical hacker will employ in, but there is one big difference, an ethical hacker is paid by an organisation to break into its systems, with its permission.

An ethical hacker does not break into anyone’s systems without authorisation. This is the only good news that emerges from this contradicting profile; ethical hacker. Ethics meaning right coduct and hacking refering to unauthorised entry into computers. It seems to me that some where down the line we have now glamourised the term 'hacking' and I'll have to sign off for now without having a conclusive answer to the question that I posed.