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Most people often get confused that Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security both are the same. But, it is not true both are two different parts of the IT world and each one owns specific skills and knowledge. Also, both have different certifications and training like Ethical Hacking Certification as well as cyber security certification courses. In simple words, we can say that Cyber Security is a broad term during which various computer security mechanisms are included, and Ethical Hacking is one of them. So, in this blog, we are going to differentiate between Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security.
But firstly, let’s understand the term ‘Cyber Security’ in-depth, and then, we’ll discuss Cyber Security vs Ethical Hacking.
Have you ever noticed while you’re resetting your password?
The website first validates your identity, and after the successful authentication, the website allows you to change your password. This is to give more security to your account and to restrict unauthorized access. Cyber Security is a combination of multiple skills and tools, which joins it together to offer the most effective security environment to users.
To make it easy to understand we will take an example that you have installed antivirus or software in your system to detect any malicious activity. Whenever the software detects any sort of malicious activity, it immediately starts sending you warnings about it. The motive here is the same, which is to create your device with more security. All this process is completed with the help of risk register files. A risk register file is used to manage every organization where all risks and their solutions are listed to prevent them from any sort of security breach.
There are mainly four different phases or levels of Cyber Security as mentioned below.
The one who is responsible for performing all the cyber security-related tasks is usually known as a Cyber Security expert. a certified Cyber Security expert requires a strong base with an understanding of various topics, and they should be capable of facing challenges like ransomware, alert fatigue, kill chains, zero-day attacks, etc. Now that you simply have understood the meaning of Cyber Security, let’s move further and discuss Cyber Security v/s Hacking and learn the way how professionals can protect our system using the technique of Ethical Hacking training.
Suppose, you have recently launched an application and established all the safety controls to make it secure and safeguard it. But, how can you be so sure that your application is fully secure and no one can bypass the safety systems?
You’ll definitely need to test it against all security breaches and check whether the security controls protect your system or not. Well, the process of testing a system and identifying all possible security breaches is known as Ethical Hacking and the person who did this is called ethical hackers.
Ethical Hacking is an element of Cyber Security, which mainly deals with finding vulnerabilities in a system and solving them before any malicious or black-hat hacker exploits them. It is a method of testing and validating the system to find out the weaknesses present in it and inform the organization about all those weaknesses. Later, the organization will hire some Cyber Security professionals to recommend measures that may help prevent the informational data from any type of theft or fraud. These cyber security professionals are also referred to as penetration testers.
To summarize, Ethical Hacking is the process of bypassing the safety system of a company to search out all the loopholes present in the system and resolve them.
After understanding the meaning of Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security, now, it’s time to differentiate between Cyber Security vs Ethical Hacking. Although both of their objectives are quite similar – i.e., to keep the system and the data secure there are certain differences between these two domains.
Cyber Security is a vast subject that features lots of network and data security mechanisms, like data security, digital forensics, Ethical Hacking, and so on more. However, Ethical Hacking is performed by ‘white-hat hackers’ whose work of hacking the system is as same as that of black-hat hackers, but the intention is different. When it comes to ethical hacking, the hacker only hacks a system to safeguard the system.
Cyber Security experts, on the opposite hand, don’t need to hack into the system. Their job is to create a shield in the system by taking all possible protective measures. In simple words, Ethical Hackers create offensive security measures, and Cyber Security experts use these defensive security measures. Ethical Hacking is like as you are intentionally trying to hack into a system just to pentest how the system would respond to such malicious activities.
Now, you are well aware of the major differences between Ethical Hacking and Cyber Security. So, I think it is a right time to choose the suitable one for you. However, you can check out our certification series including Ethical Hacking certification and CISSP Training at iGlobe Career.