Description
Security Professionals follow four key protocol concepts:
- Stay legal: Obtain proper approval before accessing and performing a security assessment.
- Define the scope: Determine the scope of the assessment so that the ethical hacker’s work remains legal and within the organization’s approved boundaries.
- Report vulnerabilities: Notify the organization of all vulnerabilities discovered during the assessment. Provide remediation advice for resolving these vulnerabilities.
- Respect data sensitivity: Depending on the data sensitivity, ethical hackers may have to agree to a non-disclosure agreement, in addition to other terms and conditions required by the assessed organization.
An ethical hacker, also referred to as a white hat hacker, is an information security (infosec) expert who penetrates a computer system, network, application or other computing resource on behalf of its owners — and with their authorization. Organizations call on ethical hackers to uncover potential security vulnerabilities that malicious hackers could exploit.
The purpose of ethical hacking is to evaluate the security of and identify vulnerabilities in target systems, networks or system infrastructure. The process entails finding and then attempting to exploit vulnerabilities to determine whether unauthorized access or other malicious activities are possible.