A white-hat hacker, or white-hat ethical hacker, is a person who uses hacking chops to identify security vulnerabilities in the tackle, software, or networks. Still, unlike black hat hackers, or vicious hackers, white hat hackers admire the rule of law as it applies to hacking. Numerous white hat hackers are former black hat hackers. The terms come from old Western pictures, where icons frequently wore white headdresses, and the bad guys wore black headdresses. #TWN
Hackers have always been criticized by society for being a threat to cyber security, but even this cyber threat has a silver lining called White Hat or Ethical Hacking. Ethical hacking, as the name suggests, is another side of the coin called hacking and is even used by the Central Intelligence of a country for saving the country's data from the cyber-attacks of the rival countries. Many countries also hire White Hat Hackers at a very handsome package to protect their data and important files from getting leaked. White Hats can be referred to as unsung heroes of hacking, the protectors of the binary realm. Let’s find out who are the white hats, why are they finding faults in the system and patching up holes.
White Hat Hackers are the experts hired by the companies or entities to re-hack the websites that have been hacked and to protect other websites from getting hacked. It is said that if you want to protect your bank from getting robbed, why not hire a bank robber for security as he will know all the tactics that a robber might use to rob the bank and will secure the bank accordingly. Their methods might be similar to the black hats. They might have even trained on the same training ground, but it is their purposes that differentiate them, while a black hat will work to harm an organization for its personal benefits, a white hat will work to protect it. By protecting the company data, they ultimately protect; the data of the individuals involved with that particular organization. It is because of these guys we can sleep peacefully at night without worrying about our personal data getting leaked. White Hat Hackers could be defined as the gatekeepers of the data. They only allow the authorized individuals the asses to the data.
Do you know about Kevin Mithnic? Well, he is the most famous White Hat Hacker, but he was not always a white hat and was even imprisoned for his crimes when he ended up hacking the websites of the companies like Nokia and Pacific Bell. But after spending years in prison, he started his own security company and helped others to remain protected from the black hats.
White Hat hacking is not just an ethical job but is also a well-paid one, and even you can step into this world of ethical hacking. How you can do it is explained in the next paragraph.
How your ethical hacking career begins depends upon your current field of work. If you are not from an I.T field, you shift into one before getting started with ethical hacking. The roadway to ethical hacking begins from an early stage. This field is most suitable for people from an I.T background; hence try gaining a bachelor's degree in information technology before getting started with ethical hacking, as ethical hacking depends a lot on your coding skills. It is in your bachelor's that you would learn topics like networking protocol, networking architecture, database interaction, database architecture, the working of operating systems. All these topics are essential for a White Hat Hacking career. After a bachelor's, it is recommended that you get a tech support job and earn certifications like CCNA and CISP. Now, the last thing left is to prepare yourself for a CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) examination, which is an essential White Hat Hacker Certification. It involves a lot of studying, and you might get lost without proper guidance. Hence, it is best recommended to get into some kind of White Hat Hacker Training Program or opt for an Ethical Hacking Course. Don’t worry! I will even provide you with the best courses you can go for to begin your ethical hacking career.
Here is a list of courses you can go for to learn ethical hacking from scratch:-
The next question arises, how much does a White Hat Hacker get paid? Well, the starting salary of an Ethical hacker in the USA is around $71,000 annually, but an old player can easily get a package of $120,000 annually. But, apart from getting a job in the top firms, you can also open up your cyber security services and earn up to $ 200,000 annually through various clients. Overall your paycheck will never disappoint you, no matter what you opt for as your earning method.
Ok, before concluding this blog, I want to discuss the hackers who fall somewhere in the middle of a white hat and a black hat, "The Grey Hats." Every heard about Anti-Heros? Well, Grey Hats are the Anti-Heros of the hacking world. Grey hats generally don’t have malicious intentions, but they act without permission from their targets, and the way they use any data they get access to comes to their personal moral code. Often grey hats hack into the systems of esteemed organizations and find out the lope holes present there and offer the company to fix those lope holes for a price. How these hackers operate is not at all ethical, but their intentions are never to cause any harm, and that’s what differentiates them from the black hats. You may ask, why did I add Grey Hats to my blog? Well, it is because many white hats used to be grey hats in the past and were transformed into white hats after they got an offer from an organization or government body. So, this is another way you might get your first job, but this is not the recommended method, as assessing anyone's data without permission is a major criminal offense and is not at all ethical.