Hisham Sarwar
A few years back, many people had no clue what hacking was and the vague idea of hackers among the masses was of nerds and geeks who never received much appreciation for their work. Now with the explosive growth of the internet, hacking has become a major concern especially for the security companies.
In reality, true hackers are the most intelligent and intellectually advanced individuals and their unquenchable thirst for absorbing the intricate details of the programming system sets them apart from the rest of the world.
When we connect to the internet, we open ourselves to the attack surface by becoming prone to the black hat hackers or the criminal hackers. A hacker’s destructive actions can harm us by bringing down our computer system and damaging our files.
But breaking into a single computer may not be a bigger issue as much as breaking into a country’s security systems or databases for revenge or profit purposes. Today the power of hackers has transformed them into communities which actively function and threaten government security all over the world.
Importance of Ethical Hackers:
The importance of white hat hackers was considered a much a necessity by American Army when pictures of skull and gruesome images of Sony executives appeared on the screens of company employees in November 2010 as reported by David E. Sanger and Martin Fackler in their articles in New York Times.
These concerns had given rise to a force of skilled individuals who actually knew how to use same set of tools as criminals to protect the programming system rather than damaging it. The white hat hackers named as “Ethical Hackers” are the people who use their capabilities to find weaknesses in government’s or companies security systems and make it less vulnerable to the criminal hackers.
Government institutions and companies employ ethical hackers to keep on testing and upgrading their security systems so that the information is not leaked in any way.
A good opportunity for fresh graduates:
Governments and companies cannot keep their programming systems safe from criminal hackers attacks on their own. So they remain on the hunt for skilled and certified ethical hackers to keep their systems protected by adopting appropriate security measures.
Ethical hackers by finding susceptibilities in computer systems save the security institutions from any downfalls of today’s computer dependent civilization.
The white hat form of hackers are in most demand these days by governments as well as security institutions therefore learning hacking has become increasingly important. All it requires is the curiosity to solve the problems and an understanding of the computer systems and programming languages.
Teaching to hack for good purposes can teach individuals to understand ethics on a much broader extent. Leaning to hack can create a thrill as well as job opportunities for a lot of people. Since not many qualified people are available therefore those who are available, they are paid handsomely by the authorities.
Learning hacking can enable the young generation not to fall prey to the criminal hackers and to have a complete control over their future. Ethical hacking is essential for the safety of a nation as well as the whole world; it can help us to avoid all the negative consequences of breaching into security systems.
In Pakistan, few ethical hackers are making country proud by identifying vulnerabilities in browsers, apps, merchant accounts worldwide. Rafay Baloch is considered as the best in the business in the country.
