EC Council
EC-Council provides professional certification and facilitates
peer interaction to build and enhance the knowledge, skill and
professional growth of its members. EC-Council offers several
options for aspiring and practicing Electronic Commerce
professionals to internalize and draw on skills identified as
essential web industry standard for Electronic Commerce.
Global Knowledge is Technology Partner
EC Council
Successful ethical hackers possess a variety of skills. First
and foremost, they must be completely trustworthy. While testing
the security of a client’s systems, the ethical hacker may discover
information about the client that should remain secret. In many
cases, this information, if publicized, could lead to real
intruders breaking into the systems, possibly leading to financial
losses. During an evaluation, the ethical hacker often holds the
“keys to the company,” and therefore must be trusted to exercise
tight control over any information about a target that could be
misused. The sensitivity of the information gathered during an
evaluation requires that strong measures be taken to ensure the
security of the systems being employed by the ethical hackers
themselves: limited-access labs with physical security protection
and full ceiling-to-floor walls, multiple secure Internet
connections, a safe to hold paper documentation from clients,
strong cryptography to protect electronic results, and isolated
networks for testing.
Ethical hackers typically have very strong programming and
computer networking skills and have been in the computer and
networking business for several years. They are also adept at
installing and maintaining systems that use the more popular
operating systems (e.g., Linux or Windows 2000) used on target
systems. These base skills are augmented with detailed knowledge of
the hardware and software provided by the more popular computer and
networking hardware vendors. It should be noted that an additional
specialization in security is not always necessary, as strong
skills in the other areas imply a very good understanding of how
the security on various systems is maintained. These systems
management skills are necessary for the actual vulnerability
testing, but are equally important when preparing the report for
the client after the test.
Given these qualifications, how does one go about finding such
individuals? The best ethical hacker candidates will have
successfully mastered hacking tools and their exploits.