In the growing digital era, there are lots of opportunities for everyone especially in the IT field. People this days mostly rely on technologies for various purposes. From online banking to shopping and of course , cloud. People are actually relying and moving there stuff on cloud rather than building there own data centre. But as we know with every great thing comes at a price . the more you connect to the world of digital assets there is higher the risk of your confidential, sensitive and private data. So how does this big enterprise companies secure your data against potential data breaches or thefts. The answer is Cybersecurity.
What is Cybersecurity?
Technically, Cybersecurity is framework of technologies, processes and practices designed to protect networks, systems and data from attack or damage or unauthorized access or misuse of authorized access.
The goal of Cybersecurity is to reduce the cyber attacks and threat vectors against exploitation of security weaknesses in networks, systems and technologies. A weakness in network, system, technology is called is its vulnerability. The lesser the vulnerabilities are in technology the, more secure it is. So basically, Cybersecurity is protection of technology including hardware, software and data from cyber attacks.
Need of Cybersecurity
As the increasing advancements in digital world, Cybersecurity threats will keep getting more complex as the hackers can easily adapt to security measures implemented by scanning for one good vulnerability that can exploit the system. This will increase the need of cybersecurity professionals on the good side in order to secure company’s vulnerable assets from cyber attacks.
It can be rightfully said that this generation lives on the internet and we are completely unaware of the fact that how the random from internet packets which contain random bit of 1’s and 0’s reach securely from the network to your computer. Its the work of security professional to make sure that the packets reach to your system totally unsniffed. Now, its golden age for a hacker as there of tons of methodologies and tools out there for free which can be used to break systems or networks easily. Hackers are having hell of a time exploiting vulnerabilities and creating malicious content. Hackers are getting more and more creative with their malwares and loads of methodologies are discovered to bypass firewalls, virus scans and malware detectors which are mind baffling.
So in order to assess and stop this kind of attacks. We need Cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity and Ethical Hacking Careers
cybersecurity can be very exciting, rewarding and well-paid. Its actually fun hacking into systems and defending them against active attacks. So, it is worth a career in cybersecurity if cybersecurity does interest you. As an information security analyst earns average 8,95,913 Rs. In India. And if you see job outlook the information security professional career is projected to grow is 32% more than By far, security is one of the most in-demand domain in IT. And jobs in any developer from 2020 to 2030. The same statistics were out to other developed countries from all around the world.
“The cybersecurity unemployment rate was 0% in 2019, where it has been for 8 years. There is predicted yo 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021 up from 1 million positions in 2014.”
– Cybersecurity Jobs Report – Herjavec Group
Therefore the whole industry is recession proof, and many roles like penetration testing or ethical hacking can be done remotely too. So, there is no better time to start career in cybersecurity.
How can Hacking be Ethical?
Laws differ in most of the countries but as far this does apply in pretty much any country. If you ask that is hacking legal, the answer would be YES. as long as you are testing the systems that you own or have permissions to test the network and systems. Hacking is pretty much just a skill that you can learn legally for example karate. Karate is a also a skill and that can be used for defense and as long as you are not committing crime.
Learning and practicing hacking is totally legal as long as you are not committing any crime while you are learning and practicing hacking. So basically ,you can practice hacking on your own systems. and also the systems you do not own as long as you have permission from the owner to do so. This actually is job of ethical hacker or a penetration tester to scan for vulnerabilities in order to secure it. And there are lots of ways in which you can make money by hacking legally like bug bounty hunting or working as a penetration tester.