Ethical Hackers

In some companies, security professionals test the security installations have been put in computers in order to ensure that they are not vulnerable to attacks by hackers. These tests involve use of hacking tools in order to carry out brute-force attack with an aim of testing the strength of passwords. While doing this, these security professionals perform the role of ethical hackers. A rather unattractive to becoming an ethical hacker is writing down the passwords of employees’ computers and then eyeballing it in order to ensure that it is strong enough to withstand hackers’ tricks.

Ethical hackers also perform the tasks of ensuring that router and firewall configurations will be able to provide the level of security that is needed by the company. In this capacity, says Tiller, the security professionals may make changes in the configuration settings and implement access control lists in addition to running tests on these configurations in order to ensure that their stability meets the company’s security standards (121). All these tests have to be done using hacking tools. Moreover, these tools have to be used to carry out many types of attacks, thus allowing the security team to see how the system perimeter will react under certain circumstances.

Hacking tools can also be used to identify when hackers are trying to launch attack on a computer or network. The recognition work is the responsibility of engineers, security professionals and network administrators. For this reason, it is important for hacking to be perceived as a procedure that is used in order for a result to be achieved. Likewise, hacking tools are software tools like any other, only that when they fall into the hands of malicious hackers, they can be used to exploit vulnerabilities within a system for malicious intent. Ethical hackers use these tools for defensive purposes while malicious hackers use them for offensive purposes.