How Businesses Can Fight Cybercrime with Ethical Hacking
As we become more reliant on technology, the risk of cyberattacks continues to grow. From small businesses to large corporations, no one is safe from the threat of hacking and data theft. Email phishing attacks alone have increased by 600 percent since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. To protect themselves, organizations must take proactive measures to enhance their security posture. One way to achieve this is through ethical hacking, in which businesses essentially fight bad actors by hiring people who know how to think, and act like them. By conducting controlled and authorized tests, ethical hackers can simulate real-world attacks and provide valuable insights and recommendations to strengthen the company’s security posture. The ethical hacking industry is growing 21 percent annually as companies adopt the practice. Let’s take a closer look at how ethical hackers can help.
Cybercrime Is Getting Worse
Organizations and individuals face a serious threat from data theft and hacking. Losing valuable business information to thieves can lead to a loss of competitive advantage for a company and can have legal consequences if the data belongs to a third party. Unfortunately, hacking has become a prevalent problem for almost all businesses in recent years. According to a HSB Cyber Study, 90% of businesses experienced hacking incidents. Even using a firewall and regularly updating passwords are just the first steps to enhancing security, and hackers are getting more sophisticated, using emerging technology, holding data for ransom, and causing catastrophic damage to small businesses and corporations alike.
The Solution: Empower Businesses with Ethical Hacking
The idea of ethical hacking may seem counterintuitive, but it can empower businesses by using the skills of ethical hackers to identify vulnerabilities so companies can fix them before they spiral and cause catastrophic data loss or financial damage. Ethical hackers purposefully break into servers and online systems to expose vulnerabilities, unlike malicious hackers who do so for fun, profit, or even revenge.
Ethical hackers possess knowledge of problem-solving strategies for security breaches and can collect and analyze data to monitor and interpret weaknesses. They possess deep knowledge of the latest infrastructure and hardware, from routers to memory storage, with the ability to establish security policies and best practices. Ethical hackers sometimes fall into the category of “penetration testers,” who look for security vulnerabilities across web-based applications, networks, and online systems, using a variety of methods to hack into systems, from designing and creating their own tools, to employing social engineering.
Companies can hire professionals ranging from self-taught to tested and certified to do ethical hacking, rather than shell out $20,000 to attract their own ethical hackers. Modern-day ethical hackers often started hacking for the challenge or to educate themselves on the vulnerabilities in information technology security. These hackers are sometimes called “white hat hackers.”
As a firm that provides security services, Centific relies on the expertise of ethical hackers to pressure test our own OneForma platform, which we rely on for our localization services. Through ethical hacking, we uncover potential vulnerabilities in our own data repository and proactively address them to protect our clients.
How Centific Can Help
We offer penetration testing services to various customers through our digital safety practice. Our services include revalidation within two weeks from the date of project completion, de-briefing of assessment report after completion of the project, and post-project support applies only to vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. Additionally, we ensure that user data is not compromised during testing in the production environment, and customers have the option to verify the assessment report from a third party at their discretion. To avail our services, customers must share the fixed issue report within 30 days from the date of sharing the first report and provide VPN access for a minimum of one-to-two users. To learn more, download our white paper on fighting digital fraud and contact us.