Responsibilities Of An Ethical Hacker

This is a guest post by Chitraparna Sinha.

An ethical hacker is a security system expert who attacks the security essentials in the manner of an unethical hacker to check and solve the vulnerabilities in the system.

There is always a possibility that the ethical hacker may turn rogue; hence it is necessary that an ethical hacker knows the rules and responsibilities attached with this field before becoming one.

5 Responsibilities of an Ethical Hacker

1) The ethical hacker should use the tools and knowledge only for legal purpose. In other words, the ethical hacker should not misuse knowledge for personal benefits.

2) The ethical hacker should be involved in “hacking” only to identify the security issues with a system and recommend solutions as a defense strategy.

3) The ethical hacker should possess management approval prior to “hacking” into a system. Even though the person is a certified professional ethical hacker, it does not give the person automatic rights to hack into a system without permission from the top management.

4) The ethical hacker should help strengthen the security network of an organization and not use the security information for his/her own advantage. It is a common human tendency to become curious and experiment with things but an ethical hacker cannot afford to take the security system of an organization lightly.

5) The ethical hacker should prepare a test plan with defined parameters, that is, to define the purpose of testing, the assumed outcome and potential solutions, and get this plan approved by the organization first before venturing further. Most importantly, the ethical hacker should show adherence to the approved plan and not digress from it.

To conclude, ethical hacking is a profession and people should treat it with the same degree of professionalism with which other professions are treated.

Ethical hacking is a serious business and with organizations becoming dependent on technology, there is a need of qualified ethical hackers who understands and follows the rules and responsibilities that comes with the job.

About the author:

Chitraparna Sinha is the founder of SocialVani where she is building a useful resource for small business entrepreneurs and assisting clients in start-up blogging and building eCommerce ventures.

Twitter: @chitraparna

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